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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 


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TnlWtrKLY (M liilCATlOM OF THEBF^TCimRUrr^STAKDJ\RDUTO[SM£ 










Vol. 20. No. 1102. Dec. 14, 1887. Annual Subscription, $30.00. 


Eiitereii attbe I’l st OfTire. V. Y., .as second-class matter. 
Copyri^lit, 1884, by Joh.n W. Lovkll Co. 


THE mSADVENTDRES 

OF 

JOHN NICHOLSON 

A CHRISTMAS STORY 

BY 

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

Author of “TREASURE ISI.AND,” “THE 
STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL 
AND MR. HYDE,” Etc. 





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LOVBLL’S LIBBAR7. 


COMPLETE CATALOGUE BY AUTHORS. 

Lovell’S Libbary now contains the complete writings of most of the best standard 
authors, such as Dickens, Thackeray, Eliot, Carlyle, Ruskin, Scott, Lytton, Black, etc., 
etc. 

Each number is issued in neat 12mo form, and the type will be found larger, and the 
paper better, than in any other cheap series published. 

JOHN W. LOVEIiL. COMPANY, 

P. O. Box 1992. lA and 16 Vesey Sto, New York. 


BY 0. M. ADAM AND A. £. 


WETHEEALD 

846 An Algonquin Maiden 20 

BY MAX ADELEE 

295 Random Shots 20 

325 Elbow Room 20 

BY GUSTAVE AIMAED 

660 The Adventurers 10 

667 The Trail-Hunter 10 

673 Pearl of the Andes 10 

1011 Pirates of the Prairies 10 

1021 The Trapper’s Daughter 10 

1032 The Tiger Slayer 10 

1045 Trappers of Arkansas 10 

1052 Border Rifles 10 

1063 The Freebooters 10 

1069 The White Scalper 10 

BY MES. ALDEEDICE 

346 An Interesting Case 20 

BY MES. ALEXANDEE 

62 The Wooing O’t, 2 Parts, each 15 

99 The Admiral’s Ward 20 

209 The Executor 20 

349 Valerie's Fate 10 

664 At Bay 10 

746 Beaton’s Bargain 20 

777 A Second Life ; 20 

799 Maid, Wife, or Widow 10 

840 By Woman’s Wit 20 

995 Which Shall it Be? 20 

BY F. ANSTEY 

30 ViceVers^; or, A Lesson to Fathers. .20 

394 The Giant’s Robe 20 

453 Black Poodle, and Other Tales 20 

616 The Tinted Venus 15 

755 A Fallen Idol 20 

BY T. S. ASTHUE 

406 Woman’s Trials 20 

507 The Two Wives 15 

618 Married Life 15 

638 The Ways of Providence 15 

645 Horne Scenes 15 

554 Stories for Parents 15 

563 Seed-Time and Harvest 15 

668 Words for the Wise 15 

674 Stox'ies for Young Housekeepers. . . .15 

679 Lessons in Life 15 

682 Off-Hand Sketches 16 

685 Tried and Tempted. ... 15 I 


BY HANS CHEI3TIAN ANDEESEN 


419 Fairy Tales 20 

BY EDWIN ARNOLD 

436 The Light of Asia 20 

456 Pearls of the Faith 15 

472 Indian Song of Songs 10 

BY W. E. AYTOUN 

351 Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers 20 

BY ADAM BADEAU 

756 Conspiracy 25 

BY SIE SAMUEL BAKER 

206 Cast up by the Sea 20 

227 Rifle and Hound in Ceylon 20 

233 Eight Years’ Wandering in Ceylon. .20 

BY C. W. BALESTIEE 

381 A Fair Device 20 

405 Life of J. G. Blaine 20 

BY E. M. BALLANTYNE 

215 The Red Eric 20 

226 The Fire Brigade 20 

239 Erling the Bold 20 

241 Deep Down 20 

BY S. BARING-GOULD 

878 Little Tu’penny 10 

BY GEORGE MIDDLETON BAYNE 

460 Galasld 20 

BY AUGUST BEBEL 

712 Woman 30 

BY MRS. E. BEDELL BENJAMIN 

748 Our Roman Palace 20 

BY A. BENRIMO 

470 Vic 15 

BY E. BERGER 

901 Charles Auchester 20 

BY W. BERGSOE 

77 Pillone 15 

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366 The Sergeant's Legacy 20 

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LOVELL’S LIBRARY, 


BY WALTER BESANT 


18 They Were Married 10 

103 Let Nothing Yoii Dismay 10 

257 >11 in a Garden Fair 20 

268 When the Ship Comes Home 10 

384 Dorothy Forster 20 

699 Self or Bearer 10 

842 The World Went Very Well Then ..20 

847 The Holy Rose 10 

002 To Call Her Mine 20 

BY WILLIAM BLACK ‘ 

10 An Adventure in Thule, etc 10 

48 A Princess of Thule 20 

82 A Daughter of Heth 20 

85 Shandon ‘Bells 20 

93 Macleod of Dare 20 

136 Yolande 20 

142 Strange Adventures of a Phaeton. . . 20 

146 White Wings 20 

153 Sunrise, 2 Parts, each 15 

178 Madcap Violet 20 

180 Kilmeny 20 

182 That Beautiful Wretch 20 

184 Green Pastures, etc 20 

188 In Silk Attire 20 

213 The Three Feathers 20 

216 Lady Silverdale's Sweetheart 10 

217 The Four MacNicols 10 

218 Mr. Pisistratus Brown, M.P 10 

225 Oliver Goldsmith 10 

282 Monarch of Mincing Lane 20 

456 Judith Shakespeare 20 

584 Wise Women of Inverness 10 

678 White Heather 20 

958 Sabina Zembra 20 

BY MISS M. E. BRADDOK 

88 The Golden Calf 2C 

104 Lady Audley’s Secret 20 

214 Phantom Fortune 20 

266 Under the Red Flag 10 

444 An Ishrnaelite 20 

556 Aurora Floyd 20 

588 To the Bitter End 20 

596 Dead Sea Fruit 2C 

698 The Mistletoe Bough 20 

766 Vixen 20 

783 The Octoroon 20 

814 Mohawks 20 

868 One Thing Needful 20 

869 Barbara; or, Splendid Misery 20 

870 John Marchmont’s Legacy 20 

871 Joshua Haggard’s Daughter 20 

872 Taken at the Flood 20 

873 Asphodel 20 

877 The Doctor’s Wife 20 

878 Only a Clod 20 

879 Sir J asper’s Tenant 20 

880 Lady’s Mile 20 

881 Birds of Prey 20 

882 Charlotte’s Inheritance 20 

883 Rupert Godwin 20 

886 Strangers and Pilgrims 20 

887 A Strange World 20 

888 Mount Royal 20 

869 J ust As I Am 20 

890 Dead Men’s Shoes 20 

892 Hostages to Fortune 20 

893 Fenton’s Quest 20 

894 The Cloven Foot 20 


BY FRANZ BARRETT. 

1009 The Great Hesper 21 

BY R. D. BLACKMORE 

851 Lorna Doone, Part 1 20 

851 Lorna Doone, Part II 20 

936 Maid of Sk( r 20 

955 Cradock Nowell, Part 1 20 

955 Cradock Nowell, Part II 20 

961 Springhaven 20 

1034 Mary Anerley 20 

1035 Alice Lorraine 20 

1036 Cristowell 20 

1037 Clara Vaughan 20 

1038 Cripps the Carrier 20 

1039 Remarkable History of Sir Thomas 

Upmore 20 

1040 Erema ; or, My Father’s Sin 20 

BY LILLIE D. BLAKE 

105 Woman’s Place To-day 20 

597 Fettered for Life 25 

BY ANNIE BRADSHAW 

716 A Crimson Stain 20 

BY CHARLOTTE BREMER 

448 Life of Fredrika Bremer 20 

BY CHARLOTTE BRONTE 

74 Jane Eyre 20 

897 Shirley 20 

BY RHODA BROUGHTON 

23 Second Thoughts 20 

230 Belinda... 20 

781 Betty’s Visions 15 

841 Dr. Cupid 20 

1022 Good-Bye, Sweetheart 20 

1023 Red as a Rose is She 20 

1024 Cometh up as a Flower 20 

1025 Not Wisely but too Well 20 

1026 Nancy 20 

1C27 Joan 20 

BY ELIZABETH BARRETT 
BROWNING 

421 Aurora Leigh 20 

479 Poems 36 

BY ROBERT BROWNING 

552 Selections from Poetical Works 20 

BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 

443 Poems 20 

BY ROBERT BUCHANAN 

318 The New Abelard 20 

696 The Master of the Mine 10 

BY JOHN BUNYAN 

200 The Pilgrim’s Progi-ess 20 

BY ROBERT BURNS 

430 Poems 20 

BY REV. JAS. S. BUSH 

113 More Words about the Bible 20 

BY E. LASSETER BYNNER 

100 Nimport, 2 Parts, each 15 

102 Tritons, 2 Parts, each 18 


2 


LOVELL’S LIBRARY. 


BY THOMAS CAMPBELL 


626 Poems. 20 

BY ROSA NOITCHETE CAREY 

G60 For Lilias 20 

911 Not Like other Girls 20 

912 Robert Ord’s Atonement 20 

959 Wee Wifie 20 

960 Wooed and Married 20 

BY WM. CARLETON 

190 Willy Reilly 20 

S20 Shane Fadh’s Wedding 10 

821 Larry McFarland’s Wake 10 

822 The Party Fight and Funeral 10 

823 The Midnight Mass 10 

824 PhilPurcel 10 

825 An Irish Oath 10 

826 Going to Maynooth 10 

827 Phelim O’Toole’s Courtship 10 

828 Dominick, the Poor Scholar 10 

829 Neal Malone 10 

BY THOMAS CARLYLE 

4S6 History of French Revolution, 2 

Parts, each 25 

494 Past and Present 20 

500 The Diamond Necklace ; and Mira- 

beaii 15 

503 Chartism 20 

6^)8 Sartor Resartus 20 

614 Early Kings of Norway 20 

620 Jean Paul Friedrich Richter 10 

522 Goethe, and Miscellaneous Essays. . . lU 

525 Life of Heyne 15 

625 Voltaire and Novalis 15 

641 Heroes, and Hero-Worship 20 

546 Signs of the Times 15 

650 German Literature 15 

661 Portraits of John Knox 15 

671 Count Cagliostro, etc 15 

578 Frederick the Great, Vol. I 20 

680 Vol. II 20 

691 “ “ “ Vol. Ill 20 

610 “ “ “ Vol. IV 20 

619 “ “ “ Vol. V 20 

622 “ “ “ Vol. VI 20 

626 “ “ Vol. VII 20 

628 “ “ “ Vol, VIII 20 

630 Life of John Sterling 20 

633 Latter-Day Pamphlets 20 

636 Life of Schiller .20 

613 Oliver Cromwell, Vol. 1 25 

646 ‘‘ “ Vol. II 25 

649 “ “ Vol. Ill 25 

652 Characteristics and other Essays. . . 15 

656 Corn LawRhymesand other Essays. 15 

658 Bailiie the Coveuanter and other Es- 
says 15 

661 Dr. Francia and other Essays 15 

BY LEWIS CARROLL 

480 Alice’s Adventures 20 

481 Through the Looking-Glass 20 

BY '' CAVENDISH ” 

422 Cavendish Card Essays . .15 

BY CERVANTES 

417 Don Quixote ... 30 

BY L. W. CHAMPNEY 

119 Bourbon Lilies 20 


BY VICTOR CHEEBiniEZ 


Samuel Brohl & Co, . . .21 

BY BERTHA M. CLAY 

Her Mother’s Sin 20 

Dora Thorne, *.20 

Beyond Pardon 20 

A Broken Wedding-Ring. 20 

Repented at Leisure 20 

Sunshine and Roses 20 

The Earl’s Atonement 20 

A Woman’s Temptation 2C 

Love Works Wonders - ,.20 

Fair but False 10 

Between Two Sins 10 

At War with Herself 15 

Hilda 10 

Her Martyrdom 20 

Lord Lynn’s Choice 10 

The Shadow of a Sin 10 

Wedded and Parted 10 

In Cupid's Net 10 

Lady Darner’s Secret 20 

A Gilded Sin 10 

Between Two Loves 20 

For Another’s Sin 20 

Romance of a Young Girl 20 

A Queen Amongst Women 10 

A Golden Dawn 10 

Like no Cther Love 10 

A Bitter Atonement 20 

Evelyn’s Folly 20 

Set in Diamonds 20 

A Fair Myster 3 ’ 20 

Thorns and Orange Blossoms 10 

Romance of a Black Veil 10 

Love's Warfare 10 

Madolin’s Lover 20 

From Out the Gloom 20 

Which Loved Him Best 10 

A True Magdalen 20 

The Sin of a Lifetime 20 

Prince Charlie’s Daughter 10 

A Golden Heart 10 

Wife in Name Only 20 

A Woman’s En*or 20 

Marjorie 20 

A Wilful Maid 20 

Lady Castlemaine’s Divorce 20 

Claribel’s Love Story 20 

Thrown on the World 20 

Under a Shadow , ,20 

A Struggle for a Ring 20 

Hilary’s Folly 20 

A Haunted Life 20 

A Woman’s Love Story 20 

A Woman’s War 20 

’Twixt Smile and Tear 20 

Lady Diana’s Pride 20 

Belle of Lynn 20 

Marjorie’s Fate 20 

Sweet Cymbeline 20 

Redeemed by Love 5i0 

The Squire’s Darling 10 

The Mystery of Colde Fell 20 

The Shattered Idol .10 

Letty Leigh 10 

The Earl’s Error 10 

Arnold’s Promise 10 

BY S. T. COLEEIDGE 

Poems 39 


242 

ms 

277 

287 

420 

423 

458 

465 

474 

476 

558 

693 

651 

669 

689 

692 

694 

695 

700 

701 

718 

720 

727 

730 

7:13 

738 

739 

740 

744 

752 

7(v4 

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J007 

1012 

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1031 

1033 

1042 

1043 

623 

8 


LOVELL’S 

BY WILKIE COLLINS 


8 The Moonstone, Part 1 10 

9 The Moonstone, Part TI 10 

24 The New Magdalen 20 

87 Heart and Science 20 

418 “I Say No” 20 

437 Tales of Two Idle Apprentices 15 

O&l The /Grhost’s Touch 10 

686 My Lady’s Money 10 

722 The Evil Genius 20 

839 The Guilty River 10 

957 The Dead Secret 20 

996 The Queen of Hearts 20 

1003 The Haunted Hotel 10 

BY HUGH CONWAY 

429 Called Back 15 

462 Dark Days 15 

612 Carriston’s Gift 10 

617 Paul Vargas: a Mystery 10 

631 A Family AJfair 20 

667 Story of a Sculptor 10 

672 Slings and Arrows 10 

715 A Cardinal Sin 20 

745 Living or Dead 20 

750 Somebody’s Story 10 

968 Bound by a Spell 20 

BY J. FENIMORE COOPER 

6 The Last of the Mohicans 20 

53 The Spy 20 

365 The Pathfinder 20 

378 Homeward Bound 20 

441 Home as Found 20 

463 The Deerslayer 30 

467 The Prairie 20 

471 The Pioneer 25 

484 The Two Admirals 20 

488 The Water-Witch 20 

491 The Red Rover 20 

601 The Pilot 20 

606 Wing and Wing 20 

512 Wyandotte 20 

617 Heidenmauer 20 

619 The Headsman 2C 

624 The Bravo 20 

627 Lionel Lincoln 20 

629 Wept of Wish-ton-Wish 20 

632 Afloat and Ashore .25 

639 Miles Wallingford 20 

643 The Monikins 20 

648 Mercedes of Castile 20 

553 The Sea Lions 20 

559 Tne Crater 20 

662 Oak Openings 20 

670 Satanstoe 20 

676 The Chain-Bearer 20 

687 Ways of the Hour 20 

601 Precaution 20 

603 Redskins 25 

611 Jack Tier 20 

BY KINAHAN CORNWALLIS 

409 Adrift with a Vengeance 25 

BY REV. JAS. FREEMAN CLARK 

167 Anti-Slavery Days 20 


BY GEORGIANA M. CRAIK 

1006 A Daughter of the People 20 


LIBRARY. 


360 

BY R. CRISWELL 

Grandfather Lickshingle 

..2f 

464 

BY R. H. DANA, JR. 

Two Years before the Mast 

..20 

345 

BY DANTE 

Dante’s Vision of Hell, Purgatory, 


and Paradise 

..20 

260 

BY FLORA A. DARLING 

Mrs. Darling’s War Letters 

..20 


BY JOYCE DARRELL 

1 

315 

Winifred Power 

..20 

478 

BY ALPHONSE DAUDET 

Tartarin of Tarascon 

..20 

604 

Sidonie 

..20 

613 

Jack 

..20 

615 

The Little Good-for-Nothing 

..20 

645 

The Nabob 

..25 


BY REV. C. H. DAVIES, D.D. 

453 Mystic London 20 

BY THE DEAN OF ST. PAUL’S 

431 Life of Spenser 10 

BY C. DEBANS 

476 A Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing 20 

BY REV. C. F. DEEMS, D.D. 

704 Evolution 20 

BY DANIEL DEFOE 

428 Robinson Crusoe 25 

BY THOS. DE QUINCEY 

20 The Spanish Nun 10 

BY CHARLES DICKENS 

10 Oliver Twist 20 

38 A Tale of Two Cities 20 

75 Child’s History of England ^ 

91 Pickwick Papers, 2 Parts, each 20 

140 The Cricket on the Hearth 10 

144 Old Curiosity Shop, 2 Parts, each. , . 16 

150 Barnaby Rudge, 2 Parts, each 15 

158 David Copperteld, 2 Parts, each 20 

170 Hard Times 20 

192 Great Expectations ,20 

201 Martin Chuzzlewit, 2 Parts, each. . ..20 

210 American Notes 20 

219 Dombey and Son. 2 Parts, each 20 

223 Little Dorrit, 2 Parts, each 20 

228 Our Mutual Friend, 2 Parts, each... 20 

231 Nicholas Nickleby, 2 Parts, each ^0 

234 Pictures from Italy 10 

237 The Boy at Mngby 10 

244 Bleak House, 2 Parts, each 20 

246 Sketches of the Young Couples. 10 

261 Master Humphrey’s Clock 10 

267 The Haimted House, etc 10 

270 The Mudfog Papers, etc 10 

273 Sketches by Boz 20 

274 A Christmas Carol, etc 15 

282 Uncommercial Traveller 20 

288 Somebody’s Luggage, etc 10 

293 The Battle of Life, etc 10 

297 Mystery of Edwin Drood 20 

298 Reprinted Pieces 20 

302 No Thoroughfare 15 

437 Tales of Two Idle Apprentices 15 


LOVELL’S LIBRARY. 


BY CARL DETLEF 

97 Irene; or, The Lonely Manor 20 

BY PEOF. DOWDEN 

404 Life of Southey 10 

BY JOHH DEYDEN 

498 Poems .....30 

BY DU BOISGOBEY 

1018 Condemned Door 20 

BY THE “DUCHESS” 

58 Portia 20 

76 Molly Eawn 20 

78 Phyllis 20 

S6 Monica 10 

90 Mrs. Geoffrey 20 

92 Airy Fairy Lilian 20 

126 Loys, Lord Beresford 20 

132 Moonshine and Marguerites 10 

162 Faith and Unfaith 20 

168 Beauty’s Daughters ^ 

284 Bossmoyne 20 

451 Doris 20 

477 A Week in Killarney 10 

530 In Durance Vile 10 

618 Dick’s Sweetheart ; or, O Tender 

Dolores” 20 

621 A Maiden all Forlorn 10 

624 A Passive Crime 10 

721 Lady Branksmere 20 

735 A Mental Struggle 20 

737 Tiie Haunted Chamber 10 

792 Her' Week’s Amusement 10 

802 Lady Valworth's Diamonds 20 

BY LOED DUFFEEIN 

95 Lettei'B from High Latitudes 20 

BY ALEXANDRE DUIIAS 

T'Gl Count of Monte Cristo, Part 1 20 

761 Count of Monte Cristo, Part II 20 

775 The Three Guardsmen 20 

786 T^^enty Years After 20 

884 The Son of Monte Cristo, Pait I 20 

884 The Son of Monte Cristo, Part II. . . 20 

885 Monte Cristo and His Wife 20 

891 Countess of Monte Cristo, Part I... 20 

891 Countess of Monte Cristo, Part II.. .20 

998 Beau Tancrt^de 20 

BY ALEXANDRE DUIIAS, JE. 

992 Camille 10 

BY MRS. ANNIE EDWARDS 

681 A Girton Girl 20 

BY GEORGE ELIOT 

56 Adam Bede, 2 Parts, each 15 

69 Amos Barton 10 

71 Silas Mamer 10 

79 Bomola, 2 Parts, each 15 

149 Janet’s Kepentance 10 

151 Felix Holt 20 

174 Mtidlemarch, 2 Part., each 20 

195 Daniel Deronda, 2 Parts, each 20 

202 Theophrastus Such 10 

205 The Spanish Gypsy.and other Poems20 

207 The Mill on the Floss, 2 Parts, each.l5 

2()8 Brother Jacob, etc 10 

674 Essays, and Leaves from a Note- 

Book 20 


BY M. BETHAM-EDWARDS 

203 Disarmed 15 

663 The Flower of Doom 10 

1G05 Next of Kin 20 

BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

373 Essays 20 

ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS. 
EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY j 

348 Bunyan, by J. A. Fronde 10 

407 Burke, by John Morley .10 

334 Bums, by Principal Shairp 10 

347 Byron, by Professor Nichol lOf 

413 Chaucer, by Prof. A. W. Ward 10 

424 Cowper, by Goldwin Smith 10 

377 Defoe, by William Minto 10 

383 Gibbon, by J. C. Morrison 10 

225 Goldsmith, by William Black 10 

369 Hume, by Professor Huxley 10 

401 Johnson, by Leslie Stephen 10 

380 Locke, by Thomas Fowler 10 

392 Milton, by Mark Pattison 10 

398 Pope, by Leslie Stephen 10 

364 Scott, by B. H. Hutton 10 

361 Shelley, by J. Symonds lb 

404 Sonthey, by Professor Dowden 10 

431 Spenser, by the Dean of St. Paul’s. .10 
344 Thackeray, by Anthony Trollope. . .10 
410 Wordsworth, by F. Myers 10 


BY B. L. FARJEON 

243 Gautran ; or. House of White Shad* 


ows 20 

654 Love’s Harvest 20 

856 Golden Bells 10 

874 Nine of Hearts 20 


BY HARRIET FARLEY 

473 Christmas Stories 20 

BY F. W. FARRAR, D,D. 

19 Seekers after God 20 

50 Early Days of Christianity, 2 Parts, 

each 20 

BY GEORGE MANNVILLE FENN 

1004 This Man’s Wife 20 

BY OCTAVE FEUILLET 

41 A Marriage in High Life 20 

987 B.omance of a Poor Young Man .... 10 

BY FRIEDRICH, BARON DE LA 

MOTTE FODOUE 

711 Undine 10 

BY MRS. FORRESTER 

760 Fair Women 20 

818 Once Again 20 

843 My Lord and My I^y 20 

844 Do. •>res 20 

850 My Hero 20 

859 Viva 20 

860 Omnia Vanitas 10 

831 Diana Carew 20 

862 From Olympus to Hades i ^ 

863 Rhona 20 

864 Roy and Viola 20 

865 June 20 

866 .’’lignon 20 

867 ii. Young Man’s Fancy ^ 


LOVELL’S LIBRAKY. 


BY THOMAS FOWLEE 

#80 Life of Locke ,....10 

BY FEANCESCA 

177 The Story of Ida 10 

BY E. E. FEANCILLON 

819 A Real Queen 20 

856 Grolden Bells 10 

BY ALBEET FEANKLYN 

122 Ameline de Bourg 15 

BY L. VIEGINIA FEENCH 

485 My Roses 20 

BY J. A. FEOUDE 

348 Life of Bunyan 10 

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114 Monsieur Lecoq, 2 Parts, each 20 

116 The Lerouge Case 20 

120 Other People’s Money ^ 

129 In Peril of His Life 20 

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155 Mystery of Orcival 20 

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258 File No. 113 ...20 

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52 Progress and Poverty 20 

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893 Social Problems 20 

796 Property in Land 15 

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57 The Golden Shaft 20 

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342 Goethe's Faust 20 

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1016 Taras Bulla 20 

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362 Plays and Poems 20 

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709 No. 99 10 

THE BROTHERS GRIMM 

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440 History of the Mormons 16 

BY EENST HAECKEL 

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107 Housekeeping and Homemaking.. . . 15 

6 


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606 Forbidden Fruit 24 

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848 She ...20 

876 The Witch’s Head 20 

900 Jess 20 

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1020 Allan Quatermain .20 

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371 The Story of Chinese Gordon 2® 

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15 L’Abbo Constantin 20 

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43 Two on a Tower 20 

157 Romantic Adventures of a Milk- 
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956 The Woodlanders 20 

964 Far from the Madding Crowd 29 

BY JOHN HARRISON AND M. 
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269 One False, both Fair ... .20 

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137 Cruel Loudon 20 

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876 Grandfather’s Chair 20 

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666 The Arundel Motto 20 

590 Old Myddleton's Money 20 

787 A Wicked Girl 10 

971 Nora’s Love Test 20 

972 The Squire’s Legacy 20 

973 Dorothy’s Venture . 20 

974 My First Offer 10 

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976 For Her Dear Sake 20 

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978 Victor and Vanquished 20 

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683 Poems 30 

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533 Principles and Fallacies of Social- 
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356 Hygiene of the Brain 25 

BY MES. M. A. HOLMES 

709 Woman agamst Woman. 20 

743 A Woman’s Vengeance 20 

BY PAXTON HOOD 

73 Life of Cromwell 15 

BY THOMAS HOOD 

511 Poems 8f 


LOVELL’S LIBRART. 


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1000 Frederick the Great and his Court, .30 

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107 By the Gate of the Sea 15 

768 Cynic Fortune 10 

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692 That Terrible Man 10 

779 My Friend Jim 10 

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439 Noctes Ambrosianse 30 

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196 Altiora Peto 20 

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179 The Little Pilgrim 10 

175 Sir Tom 20 

)326 The Wizard’s Son 26 

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602 Oliver’s Bride 10 

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831 The Son of his Father 20 

920 John : a Love Story 20 

925 A Poor Gentleman 20 

994 LucyCrofton 10 

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387 Princess Napraxine 25 

675 A Rainy June 10 

763 Moths 20 

790 Othmar 20 

805 A House Party 10 

852 Friendship 20 

853 In Maremma 20 

854 Signa 20 

656 Pascarel 20 


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336 John Bull and His Island ..2# 

459 John Bull and His Daughters. ..... 20 

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392 Life of Milton 10 

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659 Luck of the Darrells 20 

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432 Gold Bug, and Other Tales 15 

438 The A.ssignation, and Other Tales.. 15 

447 The Mmrders in the Rue Morgue 15 

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406 The Theory of the Modern Scien- 
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396 Homer’s Iliad 30 

457 Poems 30 

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189 Scottish Chiefs, Part I. 20 

Scottish Chiefs, Part II 20 

382 Thaddeus of Warsaw 25 

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838 The George-Hewitt Campaign. 20 

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339 Poems 20 

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1010 Mrs. Gregory 20 


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28 Singleheart and Doubleface. , . 

416 A Perilous Secret 

759 Foul Play 

773 Put Yourself in his Place 

913 Griffith Gaunt 

914 A Terrible Temptation 

915 Very Hard Cash 

916 It is Never Too Late to Mend . 

917 The Knightsbridge Mystery . . 

918 A Woman Hater 

919 Readiana 

BY REBECCA FERGUS REDD 


16 Freckles 20 

408 The Brierfield Tragedy 20 

BY “ RITA 

556 Dame Durden 20 

599 Like Dian’s Kiss 20 

BY SIR H. ROBERTS 

101 Harry Holbrooke ,2Q 


20 ' 

20 

20 

20 

20 

20 

10 

,20 

10 


a 


LOVELL^S LIBRARY. 


iS4 

411 

837 


4);e;f 





497 

605 

510 

516 

521 

637 


542 

566 

572 

677 

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698 

623 

627 

(>37 

639 

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713 

714 


123 

399 

833 

834 

835 

836 
997 


816 


156 

»65 

S7 

no 


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Aiden 15 

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341 Schiller’s Poems 20 

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Ethics of the Dust 10 

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Stones of Venice, 3 Vols., each 23 

Modern Painters, Vol. 1 20 

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“ “ Vol. V 25 

King of the Golden River 10 

Unto this Last 10 

Munera Pulveris. 15 

“ A Joy Forever ” 15 

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The Two Paths ! 20 

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Time and Tide 15 

Mornings in Florence 15 

St. Mark’s Rest 15 

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John Holdsworth 20 

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The Lilies of Florence 20 

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Social Etiquette 15 

BY J. X. B. SAINTINE 

Plcciola .10 


145 

359 

489 

490 

492 

493 
495 
499 
502 
504 
509 
515 
586 
544 
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557 
569 
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629 
(i32 
635 
638 
G41 


22 


334 

5 


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Ivanhoe, 2 Parts, each 

Lady of the Lake, with Notes. . , 

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Black Dwarf 

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Heart of Mid-Lothian 

Waverloy . 

Fortunes of Nigel 

Peveril of the Peak 

The Pirate 

Poetical Works 

Redgauntlet 

Woodstock 

Count Robert of Paris 

The Abbot 

Quentin Durward 

The Talisman 

St. Ronan's Well 

Anne of Geierstein 

Aunt Margaret’s Mirror 

Chronicles of the Canongate 

The Monastery 

Guy Mannering 

Kenilworth 

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Rob Roy 

The Betrothed 

Fair Maid of Perth 

Old Mortality 

BY EUGENE SCRIBE 

Fleurette 

BY PRINCIPAL SHAIRP 

Life of Biuns 

BY MARY W. SHELLEY 

Frankenstein 


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■M 


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10 


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657 Katherine Walton 30 

662 Southward Ho ! 30 

671 The Scout 30 

674 The Wigwam and Cabin 30 

677 Vasconselos 30 

680 Confession 30 

684 W oodcraf t 30 

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703 Butaw 30 

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780 Bad to Beat 10 

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425 Self-Help 26 

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694 A Summer in Skye 20 

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110 False Hopes 15 

424 Life of Cowper 10 

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65 Selma 15 

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248 Life of Webster, 2 Parts, each 16 

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449 Quisiana. 20 

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896 Life of Pope 10 

401 Life of Johnson ID 

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461 Socialism 10 

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173 Underground Russia 20 

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767 Kidnapped 20 

768 Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. 

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769 Prince Otto 10 

770 The Dynamiter 20 

793 New Arabian Nights 20 

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921 The Merry Men 20 

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412 Poems 20 

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172 Vanity Fair 30 

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220 Book of Snobs 10 

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280 Fitzboodle Papers, etc 10 

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307 Yellowplush Papers 10 

309 Sketches and Travels in London 10 

313 English Humorists 15 

316 Great Hoggarty Diamond 1C 

320 The Rose and the Ring 10 

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21 The Green Mountain Boys 20 

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94 Tempest Tossed, Parti 20 

94 Tempe.st Tossed, Part II. 20 

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133 Mr. Scarborough’s Family, 2 Parts, 

each 15 

251 Autobiography of Anthony Trollope.20 

344 Life of Thackeray 10 

367 An Old Man’s Love 16 

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895 Moonshine 20 

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468 The Count of Talavera 20 

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510 Poems 25 

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34 800 Leagues on the Amazon 10 

-35 The Cryptogram 10 

154 Tour of the World in Eighty Days. . 20 

166 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea .. ..20 

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Broken to Harness . 


.20 


BY L. 3. WALFORD. 

1055 Mr. iJmivh 

1066 The Hi tory of a Week 

j057 The Babj^'s Grandmother 

1058 Troublesome Daughter 

1069 Cousins 

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13 The Three Spaniards 

BY PROF. A. W. WARD 


413 Life of Chaucer 10 

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757 Doris’ Fortune 10 

980 At the World’s Mercy 10 

981 The House on the Marsh 20 

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427 Life of Grover Cleveland 20 

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734 Vineta 20 

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963 Her Johnnie. . . 20 

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80 Science in Short Chapters 20 


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858 A Modem Telemachus 20 

899 Love and Life 20 

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666 Barbara’s Rival 20 

691 A Woman’s Honor 20 

MISCELLANEOUS 

26 Life of Washington 20 

37 Paul and Virginia 10 

47 Baron Munchausen 10 

63 The Vendetta, by Balzac 20 

66 Margaret and her Bridesmaids 20 

72 Queen of the County ..20 

98 The Gypsy Queen 20 

118 A New Lease of Life 20 

169 Beyond the Sunri.se 20 

181 Whist, or Bumblepuppy? 10 

360 Modern Christianity a Civilized 

Heathenism 15 

265 Plutarch’s Lives, 5 Parts, each 20 

291 Famous Funny Fellows 20 

323 Life of Paul Jones 20 

332 Every-Day Cook-Book 20 

340 Clayton’s Rangers 20 

386 Swiss Family Robinson 20 

386 Childhood of the World 10 

397 Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. . .25 
402 How He Reached the White House. 25 

433 Wrecks in the Sea of Life 20 

434 Typhaines Abbey 25 

483 The Child Hunters 15 

857 A Wilful Young Woman. 20 

966 The Story of Our Mess 20 

967 The Three Bummers 20 

1019 Soeur Louise 20 


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LiLTEST ISSUES. 


1010 Mrs. Gregory, by Agnes Eay 20 

1011 Pirates of tbe Prairies, by Aimard.lO 

1012 Tbe Squire’s Darling, by Clay... 10 

1013 Tlie Mystery of Colde Fell, by Clay. 20 

1014 Tbe Daughter of an Empress, by 

Louisa Miiblbacb 30 

1015 Pemberton, by Henry Peterson... 30 

1016 Taras Bulba, by Nikolai V. Gogol.. 20 

1017 A Vital (Question, by Nikolai G. 

Tcbernuisbevsky . 30 

1018 Tbe Condemned Door, by F. du 

Boisgobey 20 

1019 Soeur Louise (Louise de Bruneval)20 

1020 Allan Qiiatermain, by Haggard. ..20 

1021 Tbe Trapper’s Daughter, by 

Gustave Aimard 10 

1022 Good-Bye, Sweetheart, by Rboda 

Broughton 20 

1023 Red as a Rose is She, by Rboda 

Broughton 20 

1024 Cometh up as a Flower, by Rhoda 

Broughton 20 

1025 Not Wisely, But Too Well, by 

Rhoda Broughton 20 

1026 Naney, by Rhoda Broughton 20 

1027 Joan, by Rhoda Broughton 20 

1023 A Near Relation, by Coleridge 20 

1029 Brenda Yorke, by Mary Cecil Hay. 10 

1030 On Her Wedding Morn, by Clay. . 10 

1031 The Shattered Idol, by B. M. Clay. 10 

1032 The Tiger Slayer, by G. Aimard. .10 

1033 Letty Leigh, by Bertha M. Clay... 10 

1034 Mary Auerley.by R. D. Blackmore.20 

1035 Alice Lorraine, by Blackmore 20 

1036 Christo well, by R. D. Blackmore.. 20 

1037 Clara Vaughan, by Blackmore 20 

1038 Crlpps, the Carrier, by Blackmore. 20 

1039 Remarkable His tory of Sir Thomas 

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1040 Erema; or, My Father’s Sin, by 

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1041 The Mystery of the Holly Tree, by 

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1042 The Earl's Error, by B. M. Clay. . 10 

1043 Arnold's Promise, by B. M. Clay.. 10 

1044 Forging the Fetters, by Alexander.lO 

1045 The Trappers of Arkansas, by 

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1046 Coinin’ thro’ the Rye, by Mather8.20 

1047 Sam’s Sweetheart, by Mathers.,.. 20 

1048 Story of a Sin, by H. B. Mathers.. 20 

1049 Cherry Ripe, by H. B Mathers... 20 

1050 My Lady Green Sleeves, Mathers.. 20 

1051 An Unnatural Bondage, by Clay. .10 

1052 Border Rifles, by Gustave Aimard.lO 

1053 Gold Elsie, by E Marlitt 20 

1054 Goethe and Schiller, by Mublbach.30 

1055 Mr. Smith, by L. B. Walford 20 

1055 The History of a Week,by Walford. 10 


1057 The Baby’s Grandmother, by L. B. 

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1058 Troublesome Daughters, by L. B. 

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10-59 Cousins, by L, B. Walford 20 

1060 The Bag of Diamonds, by Fenn. .20 

1061 Red Spider, by S. Baring-Gould. 20 

1062 Dick's Wandering, by J. Sturgis.. 20 

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1065 A Modern Circe, by The Duchess 20 

1066 An American Journey,by Aveling.30 

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1068 Flora Lyndsay, by S. Moodie 20 

1069 The White Scalper, by G. Aimard.lO 

1070 Confessions of an English Opium 

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1071 Guide of the Desert, by Aimard.. 10 

1072 “ The Duchess, ” by The Duchess.20 

1073 Scheherazade, by F. Warden 20 

1074 Roughing it in the Bush, by Su- 

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1075 The Insurgent Chief, by Aimard. . 10 

1076 Life in the Backwoods, byMoodie.20 

1077 Jim the Parson, by E, B. Benjamin 20 

1078 Tax the Area, by Kemper Bocock. 20 

1079 The Flying Horseman, by Aimar d.lO 

1080 The Blue Veil; or, The Chime of 

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1082 Strange Adventures of Lucy 

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1083 As in a Looking Glass, 1 y Philips.20 

1084 The Dean and his Daughter, by 

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1085 Life in the Clearings, by Moodie . . 20 

1086 Missouri Outlaws, by Aimard 10 

1087 The Frozen Rrate, by Russell. . .20 

1088 Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, 

Pt. I, by Goethe, translated by 

Carlyle. 20 

Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, 

Pt. U, by Goethe, translated by 
Carlyle 20 

1089 Prairie Flower, by Aimard 10 

1090 Wilhelm Meister’s Travels, by 

Goethe, translated by Carlyle 20 

1091 Queen Hortense, by L. Muhlbach.30 

1092 Milton’s Poems 35 

1093 Lady Grace, by Mrs. Henry Wood. 20 

1094 The New Republic, by Schellhous.30 

1095 From the Other Side, by Notley.. .20 

1096 The Co-operative Commonwealth, 

by Laurence Gronlund 30 

1097 Jack and Three Jills, by Philips... .20 

1098 Indian Scout, by Aimard lO 

1099 True Solution of the liUbor Ques- 

tion, by Chas. H. W. Cook 10 

1100 A Tale of Three Lions, by Haggard. 10 


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THE MISADVENTURES 


OF 

JOHN NICHOLSON 


^ ^tjcric^yf 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 


NEW YORK 


JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY 

14 AND 16 Vesey Street 


TR®W*9 

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NEW YO<JC« 


THE MISADVENTURES OF 
JOHN NICHOLSON. 


CHAPTER I. 

IN WHICH JOHN SOWS THE WIND. 

John Varey Nicholson was stupid ; yet, stupider men 
than he are now sprawling in Parliament, and lauding 
themselves as the authors of their own distinction. He 
was of a fat habit, even from boyhood, and inclined to a 
cheerful and cursory reading of the face of life ; and pos- 
sibly this attitude of mind was the original cause of his mis- 
fortunes. Beyond this hint philosophy is silent on his 
career, and superstition steps in with the more ready ex- 
planation that he was detested of the gods. 

His father — that iron gentleman — had long ago en- 
throned himself on the heights of the Disruption Princi- 
ples. What these are (and in spite of their grim name they 
are quite innocent) no array of terms would render think- 
able to the merely English intelligence ; but to the Scot 
they often prove unctuously nourishing, and Mr. Nichol- 
son found in them the milk of lions. About the period 
when the churches convene at Edinburgh in their annual 
assemblies, he was to be seen descending the mound in the 
company of divers red-headed clergymen : these voluble, 
he only contributing oracular nods, brief negatives, and 
the austere spectacle of his stretched upper lip. The 


4 THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 

names of Candlish and Begg were frequent in these inter- 
views, and occasionally the talk ran on the Residuary Es- 
tablishment and the doings of one Lee. A stranger to the 
tight little theological kingdom of Scotland might have 
listened and gathered literally nothing. And Mr. Nichol- 
son (who was not a dull man) knew this, and raged at it. 
He knew there was a vast world outside, to whom Dis- 
ruption Principles were as the chatter of tree-top apes ; 
the paper brought him chill whiffs from it ; he had met 
Englishmen who had asked lightly if he did not belong to 
the Church of Scotland, and then had failed to be much 
interested by his elucidation of that nice point ; it was an 
evil, wild, rebellious world, lying sunk in dozenedness^ for 
nothing short of a Scots word will paint this Scotsman’s 
feelings. And when he entered into his own house in 
Randolph Crescent (south side), and shut the door behind 
him, his heart swelled with security. Here, at least, was a 
citadel impregnable by right-hand defections or left-hand 
extremes. Here was a family where prayers came at the 
same hour, where the Sabbath literature was unimpeach- 
ably selected, where the guest who should have leaned to 
any false opinion was instantly set down, and over which 
there reigned all week, and grew denser on Sundays, a si- 
lence that was agreeable to his ear, and a gloom that he 
found comfortable. 

Mrs. Nicholson had died about thirty, and left him with 
three children : a daughter two years, and a son about 
eight years younger than John ; and John himself, the un- 
lucky bearer of a name infamous in English history. The 
daughter, Maria, was a good girl — dutiful, pious, dull, but 
so easily startled that to speak to her was quite a perilous 
enterprise. “ I don’t think I care to talk about that, if 
you please,” she would say, and strike the boldest speech- 
less by her unmistakable pain ; this upon all topics — dress, 
pleasure, morality, politics, in which the formula was 
changed to “ my papa thinks otherwise,” and even religion, 
unless it was approached with a particular whining tone 


THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 


of voice. Alexander, the younger brother, was sickly, 
clever, fond of books and drawing, and full of satirical 
remarks. In the midst of these, imagine that natural, 
clumsy, unintelligent, and mirthful animal, John ; mighty 
well-behaved in comparison with other lads, although not 
up to the mark of the house in Randolph Crescent ; full of 
a sort of blundering affection, full of caresses which were 
never very warmly received ; full of sudden and loud 
laughter which rang out in that still house like curses. Mr. 
Nicholson himself had a great fund of humor, of the Scots 
order — intellectual, turning on the observation of men ; 
his own character, for instance — if he could have seen it in 
another — would have been a rare feast to him ; but his 
son’s empty guffaws over a broken plate, and empty, almost 
light-hearted remarks, struck him with pain as the indices 
of a weak mind. 

Outside the family John had early attached himself 
(much as a dog may follow a marquis) to the steps of Alan 
Houston, a lad about a year older than himself, idle, a trifle 
wild, the heir to a good estate wdiich was still in the hands 
of a rigorous trustee, and so royally content with himself 
that he took John’s devotion as a thing of course. The 
intimacy was gall to Mr. Nicholson ; it took his son from 
the house, and he was a jealous parent ; it kept him from 
the oflflce, and he was a martinet ; lastly, Mr. Nicholson 
was ambitious for his family (in which, and the Disruption 
Principles, he entirely lived), and he hated to see a son of 
his plav second fiddle to an idler. After some hesitation, 
he ordered that the friendship should cease — an unfair 
command, though seemingly inspired by the spirit of 
prophecy ; and John, saying nothing, continued to disobey 
the order under the rose. 

John was nearly nineteen when he was one day dismissed 
rather earlier than usual from his father’s office, where he 
was studying the practice of the law. It was Saturday ; 
and except that he had a matter of four hundred pounds 
in his pocket which it was his duty to hand over to the 


6 THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 

British Linen Company’s Bank, he had the whole after- 
noon at his disposal. He went by Prince’s Street enjoying 
the mild sunshine, and the little thrill of easterly wind that 
tossed the flags along that terrace of palaces, and tumbled 
the green trees in the garden. The band was playing down 
in the valley under the castle ; and when it came to the 
turn of the pipers, he heard their wild sounds with a stir- 
ring of the blood. Something distantly martial woke in 
him ; and he thought of Miss Mackenzie, whom he was to 
meet that day at dinner. 

Now, it is undeniable that he should have gone directly 
to the bank, but right in the way stood the billiard-room 
of the hotel where Alan was almost certain to be found ; 
and the temptation proved too strong. He entered the 
billiard-room, and was instantly greeted by his friend, cue 
in hand. 

“ Nicholson,” said he, “ I want you to lend me a pound 
or two till Monday.” 

“ You’ve come to the right shop, haven’t you ? ” re- 
turned John. “ I have twopence.” 

“ Nonsense,” said Alan. “ You can get some. Go and 
borrow at your tailor’s ; they all do it. Or I’ll tell you 
what : pop your watch.” 

“ Oh, yes, I dare say,” said John. “ And how about 
my father ? ” 

“ How is he to know ? He doesn’t wind it up for you at 
night, does he ?” inquired Alan, at which John guffawed. 
“No, seriously; I am in a fix,” continued the tempter 
“ I have lost some money to a man here. I’ll give it you 
to-night, and you can get the heir-loom out again on Mon- 
day. Come ; it’s a small service, after all. I would do a 
good deal more for you.” 

Whereupon John went forth, and pawned his gold watch 
under the assumed name of John Froggs, 85 Pleasance. 
But the nervousness that assailed him at the door of that 
inglorious haunt — a pawnshop — and the effort necessary to 
invent the pseudonym (which, somehow, seemed to him a 


THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 7 


necessary part of the procedure), had taken more time 
than he imagined ; and when he returned to the billiard- 
room with the spoils, the bank had already closed its 
doors. 

This was a shrewd knock. A piece of business had 
been neglected.” He heard these words in his father’s 
trenchant voice, and trembled, and then dodged the 
thought. After all, who was to know ? He must carry 
four hundred pounds about with him till Monday, when the 
neglect could be surreptitiously repaired ; and meanwhile, 
he was free to pass the afternoon on the encircling divan of 
the billiard-room, smoking his pipe, sipping a pint of ale, 
and enjoying to the mast-head the modest pleasures of ad- 
miration. 

None can admire like a young man. Of all youth’s 
passions and pleasures, tliis is the most common and least 
alloyed ; and every flash of Alan’s black eyes ; every aspect 
of his curly head ; every graceful reach, every easy, stand- 
off attitude of waiting ; ay, and down to his shirt-sleeves 
and wrist-links, were seen by John through a luxurious 
glory. He valued himself by the possession of that royal 
friend, hugged himself upon the thought, and swam in 
warm azure ; his own defects, like vanquished difficulties, 
becoming things on which to plume himself. Only when 
he thought of Miss Mackenzie there fell upon his mind a 
shadow of regret ; that young lady was worthy of better 
things than plain John Nicholson, still known among 
schoolmates by the derisive name of “Fatty;” and he 
felt, if he could chalk a cue, or stand at ease, with such a 
careless grace as Alan, he could approach the object 
of his sentiments with a less crushing sense of inferi- 
ority. 

Before they parted, Alan made a proposal that was 
startling in the extreme. He would be at Colette’s that 
night about twelve, he said. Why should not John come 
there and get the money ? To go to Colette’s was to see 
life, indeed ; it was wrong ; it was against the laws ; it par- 


8 THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 

took, in a very dingy manner, of adventure. Were it 
known, it was the sort of exploit that disconsidered a 
young man for good with the more serious classes, but gave 
him a standing with the riotous. And yet Colette’s was 
not a hell ; it could not come, without vaulting hyperbole, 
under the rubric of a gilded saloon ; and, if it was a sin to 
go there, the sin was merely local and municipal. Colette 
(whose name I do not know how to spell, for I was never 
in epistolary communication with that hospitable outlaw) 
was simply an unlicensed publican, who gave suppers after 
eleven at night, the Edinburgh hour of closing. If you 
belonged to a club, you could get a much better supper at 
the same hour, and lose not a jot in public esteem. But if 
you lacked that qualification, and were an hungered, or 
inclined toward conviviality at unlawful hours, Colette’s 
was your only port. You were very ill-supplied. The 
company was not recruited from the Senate or the Church, 
though the Bar was very well represented on the only 
occasion on which I flew in the face of my country’s laws, 
and, taking my reputation in my hand, penetrated into 
that grim supper-house. And Colette’s frequenters, thrill- 
ingly conscious of wrong-doing and “ that two-handed en- 
gine (the policeman) at the door,” were perhaps inclined 
to somewhat feverish excess. But the place was in no 
sense a very bad one ; and it is somewhat strange to me, 
at this distance of time, how it had acquired its danger- 
ous repute. 

In precisely the same spirit as a man may debate a pro- 
ject to ascend the Matterhorn or to cross Africa, John 
considered Alan’s proposal, and, greatly daring, accepted 
it. As he walked home, the thoughts of tliis excursion 
out of the safe places of life into the wild and arduous, 
stirred and struggled in his imagination with the image of 
Miss Mackenzie — incongruous and yet kindred thoughts, 
for did not each imply unusual tightening of the pegs of 
resolution ? did not each woo him forth and warn him 
back again into himself ? 


THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON, 9 


Between these two considerations, at least, he was more 
than usually moved ; and when he got to Randolph Cres- 
cent, he quite forgot the four hundred pounds in the in- 
ner pocket of his great-coat, hung up the coat, with its 
rich freight, upon his particular pin of the hat-stand ; and 
in the very action sealed his doom. 


CHAPTER II. 


IN WHICH JOHN REAPS THE WHIRLWIND. 

About half-past ten it was John’s brave good fortune to 
offer his arm to Miss Mackenzie, and escort her home. 
The night was chill and starry ; all the way eastward the 
trees of the different gardens rustled and looked black. 
Up the stone gully of Leith Walk, when they came to 
cross it, the breeze made a rush and set the flames of the 
street-lamps quavering ; and w'hen at last they had mounted 
to the Royal Terrace, where Captain Mackenzie lived, i 
great salt freshness came in their faces from the sea. 
These phases of the walk remained written on John’s mem^ 
ory, each emphasized by the touch of that light hand on 
his arm ; and behind all these aspects of the nocturnal city 
he saw, in his mind’s eye, a picture of the lighted drawing- 
room at home where he had sat talking with Flora ; and 
his father, from the other end, had looked on with a kind 
and ironical smile. John had read the significance of that 
smile, which might have escaped a stranger. Mr. Nichol- 
son had remarked his son’s entanglement with satisfaction, 
tinged by humor ; and his smile, if it still was a thought 
contemptuous, had implied consent. 

At the captain’s door the girl held out her hand, with a 
certain emphasis ; and John took it and kept it a little 
longer, and said, ^‘Good-night, Flora, dear,” and was in- 
stantly thrown into much fear by his presumption. But 
she only laughed, ran up the steps, and rang the bell ; and 
while she was waiting for the door to open, kept close in 
the porch, and talked to him from that point as out of a 
fortification. She had a knitted shawl over her head ; her 


THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. ii 

blue Highland eyes took the light from the neighboring 
street-lamp and sparkled ; and when the door opened and 
closed upon her, John felt cruelly alone. 

He proceeded slowly back along the terrace in a tender 
glow ; and when he came to Greenside Church, he halted 
in a doubtful mind. Over the crown of the Calton Hill, 
to his left, lay the way to Colette's, where Alan would soon 
be looking for his arrival, and where he would now have no 
more consented to go than he would have wilfully wal- 
lowed in a bog ; the touch of the girl’s hand on his sleeve, 
and the kindly light in his father’s eyes, both loudly for- 
bidding. But right before him was the way home, which 
pointed only to bed, a place of little ease for one whose 
fancy was strung to the lyrical pitch, and whose not very 
ardent heart was just then tumultuously moved. The hill- 
top, the cool air of the night, the company of the great 
monuments, the sight of the city under his feet, with its 
hills and valleys and crossing files of lamps, drew him by 
all he had of the poetic, and he turned that way ; and by 
that quite innocent deflection, ripened the crop of his ve- 
nial errors for the sickle of destiny. 

On a seat on the hill above Greenside he sat for perhaps 
half an hour, looking down upon the lamps of Edinburgh, 
and up at the lamps of heaven. Wonderful were the re- 
solves he formed ; beautiful and kindly were the vistas of 
future life that sped before him. He uttered to himself 
the name of Flora in so many touching and dramatic 
keys, that he became at length fairly melted with tender- 
ness, and could have sung aloud. At that juncture a cer- 
tain creasing in his great-coat caught his ear. He put his 
hand into his pocket, pulled forth the envelope that held 
the money, and sat stupefied. The Calton Hill, about this 
period, had an ill name of nights ; and to be sitting there 
with four hundred pounds that did not belong to him was 
hardly wise. He looked up. There was a man in a very 
bad hat a little on one side of him, apparently looking at 
the scenery ; from a little on the other a second night- 


12 THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 


walker was drawing very quietly near. Up jumped John. 
The envelope fell from his hands ; he stooped to get it, 
and at the same moment both men ran in and closed with 
him. 

A little after, he got to his feet very sore and shaken, 
the poorer by a purse which contained exactly one penny 
postage-stamp, by a cambric handkerchief, and by the all- 
important envelope. 

Here was a young man on whom, at the highest point 
of loverly exaltation, there had fallen a blow too sharp to 
be supported alone ; and not many hundred yards away 
his greatest friend was sitting at supper — ay, and even ex- 
pecting him. Was it not in the nature of man that he 
should run there ? He went in quest of sympathy — in 
quest of that droll article that we all suppose ourselves to 
want when in a strait, and have agreed to call advice ; and 
he went, besides, with vague but rather splendid expec- 
tations of relief. Alan was rich, or would be so when he 
came of age. By a stroke of the pen he might remedy 
this misfortune, and avert that dreaded interview with Mr. 
Nicholson, from which John now shrunk in imagination as 
the hand draws back from fire. 

Close under the Calton Hill there runs a certain narrow 
avenue, part street, part by-road. The head of it faces the 
doors of the prison ; its tail descends into the sunless slums 
of the Low Calton. On one hand it is overhung by the 
crags of the hill, on the other by an old graveyard. Be- 
tween these two the roadway runs in a trench, sparsely 
lighted at night, sparsely frequented by day, and bordered, 
when it was cleared the place of tombs, by dingy and am- 
biguous houses. One of these was the house of Colette ; 
and at his door our ill-starred John was presently beating 
for admittance. In an evil hour he satisfied the jealous in- 
quiries of the contraband hotel-keeper ; in an evil hour he 
penetrated into the somewhat unsavory interior. Alan, to 
be sure, was there, seated in a room lighted by noisy gas- 
ets, beside a dirty table-cloth, engaged on a coarse meal, 


THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON, 13 

and in the company of several tipsy members of the junior 
bar. But Alan was not sober ; he had lost a thousand 
pounds upon a horse-race, had received the news at din- 
ner-time, and was now, in default of any possible means 
of extrication, drowning the memory of his predicament. 
He to help John ! The thing was impossible ; he couldn’t 
help himself. 

“ If you have a beast of a father,” said he, “ I can tell 
you I have a brute of a trustee.” 

“ I’m not going to hear my father called a beast,” said 
John, with a beating heart, feeling that he risked the last 
sound rivet of the chain that bound him to life. 

But Alan was quite good-natured. 

“ All right, old fellow,” said he. “ Mos’ respec’able 
man your father.” And he introduced his friend to his 
companions as “old Nicholson the what-d’ye-call-um’s 
son.” 

John sat in dumb agony. Colette’s foul walls and mac- 
ulate tabled! nen, and even down to Colette’s villainous 
casters, seemed like objects in a nightmare. And just 
then there came a knock and a scurrying ; the police, so 
lamentably absent from the Calton Hill, appeared upon 
the scene ; and the party, taken flagrante delicto^ with their 
glasses at their elbow, were seized, marched up to the po- 
lice-office, and all duly summoned to appear as witnesses 
in the consequent case against that arch-shebeener, Colette. 

It was a sorrowful and a mightily sobered company that 
came forth again. The vague terror of public opinion 
weighed generally on them all ; but there were private and 
particular horrors on the minds of individuals. Alan stood 
in dread of his trustee, already sorely tried. One of the 
group was the son of a country minister, another of a 
judge ; John, the unhappiest of all, had David Nicholson 
to father, the idea of facing whom on such a scandalous 
subject was physically sickening. They stood awhile con- 
sulting under the buttresses of Saint Giles ; thence they 
adjourned to the lodgings of one of the number in North 


14 THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON 


Castle Street, where (for that matter) they might have had 
quite as good a supper, and far better drink, than in the 
dangerous paradise from which they had been routed. 
There, over an almost tearful glass, they debated their 
position. Each explained he had the world to lose if the 
affair went on, and he appeared as a witness. It was re- 
markable what bright prospects were just then in the very 
act of opening before each of that little company of youths, 
and what pious consideration for the feelings of their 
families began now to well from them. Each, moreover, 
was in an odd state of destitution. Not one could bear his 
share of the fine ; not one but evinced a wonderful twinkle 
of hope that each of the others (in succession) was the very 
man who could step in to make good the deficit. One took 
a high hand ; he could not pay his share ; if it went to a 
trial, he should bolt ; he had always felt the English Bar to 
be his true sphere. Another branched out into touching 
details about his family, and was not listened to. John, in 
the midst of this disorderly competition of poverty and 
meanness, sat stunned, contemplating the mountain bulk 
of his misfortunes. 

At last, upon a pledge that each should apply to his 
family with a common frankness, this convention of un- 
happy young asses broke up, went down the common stair, 
and in the gray of the spring morning, with the streets 
lying dead empty all about them, the lamps burning on 
into the daylight in diminished lustre, and the birds begin- 
ning to sound premonitory notes from the groves of the 
town gardens, went each his own way with bowed head 
and echoing footfall. 

The rooks were awake in Randolph Crescent ; but the 
windows looked down, discreetly blinded, on the return of 
the prodigal. John’s pass-key was a recent privilege ; this 
was the first time it had been used ; and, oh ! with what a 
sickening sense of his unworthiness he now inserted it into 
the well-oiled lock and entered that citadel of the pro- 
prieties ! All slept ; the gas in the hall had been left 


THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 15 

faintly burning to light his return ; a dreadful stillness 
reigned, broken by the deep ticking of the eight-day clock. 
He put the gas out, and sat on a chair in the hall, waiting 
and counting the minutes, longing for any human counte- 
nance. But when at last he heard the alarm spring its 
rattle in the lower story, and the servants begin to be 
about, he instantly lost heart, and fled to his own room, 
where he threw himself upon the bed. 


CHAPTER III. 


IN WHICH JOHN ENJOYS THE HARVEST HOME. 

Shortly after breakfast, at which he assisted with a 
highly tragical countenance, John sought his father where 
he sat, presumably in religious meditation, on the Sabbath 
mornings. The old gentleman looked up with that sour, 
inquisitive expression that came so near to smiling and 
was so different in effect. 

“This is a time when I do not like to be disturbed,” he 
said. 

“ I know that,” returned John ; “ but I have — I want — 
I’ve made a dreadful mess of it,” he broke out, and turned 
to the window. 

Mr. Nicholson sat silent for an appreciable time, while 
his unhappy son surveyed the poles in the back green, and 
a certain yellow cat that was perched upon the wall. De- 
spair sat upon John as he gazed ; and he raged to think of 
the dreadful series of his misdeeds, and the essential in- 
nocence that lay behind them. 

“ Well,” said the father, with an obvious effort, but in 
very quiet tones, “ what is it ? ” 

“ Maclean gave me four hundred pounds to put in the 
bank, sir,” began John ; “and I’m sorry to say that I’ve 
been robbed of it ! ” 

“ Robbed of it ? ” cried Mr. Nicholson, with a strong ris- 
ing inflection. “Robbed? Be careful what you say, John !” 

“ I can’t say anything else, sir ; I was just robbed of it,” 
said John, in desperation, sullenly. 

“And where and when did this extraordinary event take 
place ? ” inquired the father. 


THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON 17 

‘‘On the Calton Hill, about twelve last night.” 

“The Calton Hill?” repeated Mr. Nicholson. “And 
what were you doing there at such a time of the night ? ” 

“ Nothing, sir,” says John. 

Mr. Nicholson drew in his breath. 

“ And how came the money in your hands at twelve last 
night ? ” he asked, sharply. 

“ I neglected that piece of business,” said John, antici- 
pating comment ; and then in his own dialect : “ I clean 
forgot all about it.” 

“ Well,” said his father, “ it's a most extraordinary story. 
Have you communicated with the police ? ” 

“ I have,” answered poor John, the blood leaping to his 
face. “ They think they know the men that did it. I 
dare say the money will be recovered, if that was all,” 
said he, with a desperate indifference, which his father set 
down to levity ; but which sprung from the consciousness 
of worse behind. 

“Your mother’s watch, too?” asked Mr. Nicholson. 

“Oh, the watch is all right!” cried John. “At least, 
I mean I was coming to the watch — the fact is, I am 
ashamed to say, I — I had pawned the watch before. Here 
is the ticket ; they didn’t find that ; the watch can be re- 
deemed ; they don’t sell pledges.” The lad panted ouT 
these phrases, one after another, like minute-guns ; but at 
the last word, which rang in that stately chamber like an 
oath, his heart failed him utterly; and the dreaded silence 
settled on father and son. 

It was broken by Mr. Nicholson picking up the pawn- 
ticket : “John Froggs, 85 Pleasance,” he read ; and then 
turning upon John, with a brief flash of passion and dis- 
gust, “ VJho is John Froggs ?” he cried. 

“ Nobody,” said John. “ It was just a name.” 

“An alias"' his father commented. 

“ Oh ! I think scarcely quite that,” said the culprit ; 
“ it’s a form, they all do it, the man seemed to understand, 

we had a great deal of fun over the name ” 

2 


18 THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 

He paused at that, for he saw his father wince at the 
picture like a man physically struck ; and again there was 
silence. 

“ I do not think,” said Mr. Nicholson, at last, “ that I am 
an ungenerous father. I have never grudged you money 
within reason, for any avowable purpose ; you had just to 
come to me and speak. And now I find that you have 
forgotten all decency and all natural feeling, and actually 
pawned — pawned — your mother’s watch. You must have 
had some temptation ; I will do you the justice to suppose 
it was a strong one. What did you want with this money?” 

would rather not tell you, sir,” said John. *‘It will 
only make you angry.” 

I will not be fenced with,” cried his father. “There 
must be an end of disingenuous answers. What did you 
want with this money ? ” 

“To lend it to Houston, sir,” says John. 

“ I thought I had forbidden you to speak to that young 
man ? ” asked the father. 

“ Yes, sir,” said John ; “but I only met him.” 

“ Where ? ” came the deadly question. 

And “ In a billiard-room,” was the damning answer. 
Thus had John’s single departure from the truth brought 
instant punishment. For no other purpose but to see 
Alan would he have entered a billiard-room ; but he had 
desired to palliate the fact of his disobedience, and now 
it appeared that he frequented these disreputable haunts 
upon his own account. 

Once more Mr. Nicholson digested the vile tidings in 
silence ; and when John stole a glance at his father’s coun- 
tenance he was abashed to see the marks of suffering. 

“Well,” said the old gentleman, at last, “I cannot pre- 
tend not to be simply bowed down. I rose this morning 
what the world calls a happy man — happy, at least, in a 
son of whom I thought I could be reasonably proud ” 

But it was beyond human nature to endure this lon- 
ger; and John interrupted almost with a scream. “Oh, 


THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 19 

wheest ! ” he cried, “ that’s not all, that’s not the worst of 
it — it’s nothing! How could I tell you were proud of me? 
Oh ! I wish, I wish that I had known ; but you always said 
I was such a disgrace ! And the dreadful thing is this : we 
were all taken up last night, and we have to pay Colette’s 
fine among the six, or we’ll be had up for evidence — she- 
beening it is. They made me swear to tell you ; but for 
my part,” he cried, bursting into tears, “ I just wish that 
I was dead ! ” And he fell on his knees before a chair and 
hid his face. 

Whether his father spoke, and whether he remained long 
in the room or at once departed, are points lost to history. 
A horrid turmoil of mind and body ; bursting sobs ; broken, 
vanishing thoughts, now of indignation, now of remorse ; 
broken elementary whiffs of consciousness, of the smell 
of the horse-hair on the chair bottom, of the jangling of 
church bells that now began to make day horrible through- 
out the confines of the city, of the hard floor that bruised 
his knees, of the taste of tears that found their way into 
his mouth : for a period of time, the duration of which I 
cannot guess, while I refuse to dwell longer on its agony, 
these were the whole of God’s world for John Nicholson. 

When at last, as by the touching of a spring, he returned 
again to clearness of consciousness and even a measure of 
composure, the bells had but just done ringing, and the 
Sabbath silence was still marred by the patter of belated 
feet. By the clock above the fire, as well as by these more 
speaking signs, the service had not long begun ; and the 
unhappy sinner, if his father had really gone to church, 
might count on near two hours of only comparative unhap- 
piness. With his father the superlative degree returned 
infallibly. He knew it by every shrinking fibre in his 
body, he knew it by the sudden dizzy whirling of his brain, 
at the mere thought of that calamity. An hour and a 
half, perhaps an hour and three-quarters, if the doctor was 
long-winded, and then would begin again that active agony 
from Avhich, even in the dull ache of the present, he shrunk 


20 THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 


as from the bite of fire. He saw, in a vision, the family 
pew, the somnolent cushions, the Bibles, the psalm-books, 
Maria with her smelling-salts, his father sitting spectacled 
and critical ; and at once he was struck with indignation, 
not unjustly. It was inhuman to go off to church, and 
leave a sinner in suspense, unpunished, unforgiven. And 
at the very touch of criticism, the paternal sanctity was 
lessened ; yet the paternal terror only grew ; and the two 
strands of feeling pushed him in the same direction. 

And suddenly there came upon him a mad fear lest his 
father should have locked him in. The notion had no 
ground in sense ; it was probably no more than a remi- 
niscence of similar calamities in childhood, for his father’s 
room had always been the chamber of inquisition and the 
scene of punishment ; but it stuck so rigorously in his mind 
that he must instantly approach the door and prove its 
untruth. As he went, he struck upon a drawer left open in 
the business-table. It was the money-drawer, a measure 
of his father’s disarray : the money-drawer — perhaps a 
pointing providence ! Who is to decide, when even divines 
dijBfer between a providence and a temptation ? or who, sit- 
ting calmly under his own vine, is to pass a judgment on 
the doings of the poor, hunted dog, slavishly afraid, slav- 
ishly rebellious, like John Nicholson on that particular 
Sunday ? His hand was in the drawer, almost before his 
mind had conceived the hope ; and rising to his new sit- 
uation, he wrote, sitting in his father’s chair and using his 
father’s blotting-pad, his pitiful apology and farewell : 

“ My dear Father, — I have taken the money, but I will 
pay it back as soon as I am able. You will never hear of 
me again. I did not mean any harm by anything, so I 
hope you will try and forgive me. I wish you would say 
good-by to Alexander and Maria, but not if you don’t 
want to. I could not wait to see you, really. Please try 
to forgive me. Your affectionate son, 

“John Nicholson.’’ 


THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON, 2i 


The coins abstracted and the missive written, he could 
not be gone too soon from the scene of these transgres- 
sions ; and remembering how his father had once returned 
from church, on some slight illness, in the middle of the 
second psalm, he durst not even make a packet of a change 
of clothes. Attired as he was, he slipped from the pater- 
nal doors, and found himself in the cool spring air, the 
thin spring sunshine, and the great Sabbath quiet of the 
city, which was now only pointed by the cawing of the 
rooks. There was not a soul in Randolph Crescent, nor a 
soul in Queensferry Street ; in this out-door privacy and 
the sense of escape, John took heart again ; and with a 
pathetic sense of leave-taking, he even ventured up the 
lane and stood awhile, a strange peri, at the gates of a 
quaint paradise, by the west end of St. George’s Church. 
They were singing within ; and by a strange chance the 
tune was “ St. George’s, Edinburgh,” which bears the 
name, and was first sung in the choir of that church. 
“ Who is this King of Glory ? ” went the voices from with- 
in ; and, to John, this was like the end of all Christian ob- 
servances, for he was now to be a wild man like Ishmael, 
and his life was to be cast in homeless places and with 
godless people. 

It was thus, with no rising sense of the adventurous, but 
in mere desolation and despair, that he turned his back on 
his native city, and set out on foot for California, with a 
more immediate eye to Glasgow. * 


CHAPTER IV. 


THE SECOND SOWING. 

It is no part of mine to narrate the adventures of John 
Nicholson, which w’ere many, but simply his more mo- 
mentous misadventures, which were more than he desired, 
and, by human standards, more than he deserved ; how he 
reached California, how he was rooked, and robbed, and 
beaten, and starved ; how he was at last taken up by char- 
itable folk, restored to some degree of self-complacency, 
and installed as a clerk in a bank in San Francisco, it 
would take too long to tell ; nor in these episodes were 
there any marks of the peculiar Nicholsonic destiny, for 
they were just such matters as befell some thousands of 
other young adventurers in the same days and places. But 
once posted in the bank, he fell for a time into a high de- 
gree of good fortune, which, as it was only a longer way 
about to fresh disaster, it behooves me to explain. 

It was his luck to meet a young man in what is techni- 
cally called a “ dive," and thanks to his monthly wages, to 
extricate this new acquaintance from a position of present 
disgrace and possible cfanger in the future. This young 
man was the nephew of one of the Nob Hill magnates, who 
run the San Francisco Stock Exchange, much as more 
humble adventurers, in the corner of some public park at 
home, maybe seen to perform the simple artifice of pea and 
thimble : for their own profit, that is to say, and the dis- 
couragement of public gambling. It was thus in his power 
— and, as he was of grateful temper, it was among the 
things that he desired — to put John in the way of growing 
rich ; and thus, without thought or industry, or so much 


THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 23 


as even understanding the game at which he played, but 
by simply buying and selling what he was told to buy and 
sell, that plaything of fortune was presently at the head 
of between eleven and twelve thousand poundSj or, as he 
reckoned it, of upward of sixty thousand dollars. 

How. he had come to deserve this wealth, any more than 
how he had formerly earned disgrace at home, was a prob- 
lem beyond the reach of his philosphy. It was true that 
he had been industrious at the bank, but no more so than 
the cashier, who had seven small children and was visibly 
sinking in decline. Nor was the step which had deter- 
mined his advance — a visit to a dive with a month’s wages 
in his pocket — an act of such transcendent virtue, or even 
wisdom, as to seem to merit the favor of the gods. From 
some sense of this, and of the dizzy see-saw — heaven-high, 
hell-deep — on which men sit clutching ; or perhaps fear- 
ing that the sources of his fortune might be insidiously 
traced to some root in the field of petty cash ; he stuck to 
his work, said not a word of his new circumstances, and 
kept his account with a bank in a different quarter of the 
town. The concealment, innocent as it seems, was the first 
step in the second tragi-comedy of John’s existence. 

Meanw’hile, he had never written home. Whether from 
diffidence or shame, or a touch of anger, or mere procras- 
tination, or because (as we have seen) he had no skill in 
literary arts, or because (as I am sometimes tempted to 
suppose) there is a law in human nature that prevents 
young men — not otherwise beasts — from the performance 
of this simple act of piety — months and years had gone 
by, and John had never written. The habit of not writing, 
indeed, was already fixed before he had begun to come 
into his fortune ; and it was only the difficulty of breaking 
this long silence that withheld him from an instant restitu- 
tion of the money he had stolen or (as he preferred to 
call it) borrowed. In vain he sat before paper, attending 
on inspiration ; that heavenly nymph, beyond suggesting 
the words “my dear father,” remained obstinately silent ; 


24 the misadventures of JOHN NICHOLSON, 


and presently John would crumple up the sheet and de- 
cide, as soon as he had “a good chance,” to carry the 
money home in person. And this delay, which is in- 
defensible, was his second step into the snares of for- 
tune. 

Ten years had passed, and John was drawing near to 
thirty. He had kept the promise of his boyhood, and was 
now of a lusty frame, verging toward corpulence ; good 
features, good eyes, a genial manner, a ready laugh, a long 
pair of sandy whiskers, a dash of an American accent, a 
close familiarity with the great American joke, and a cer- 
tain likeness to a R-y-1 P-rs-a-ge, who shall remain name- 
less for me, made up the man’s externals as he could be 
viewed in society. Inwardly, in spite of his gross body and 
highly masculine whiskers, he was more like a maiden 
lady than a man of twenty-nine. 

It chanced one day, as we was strolling down Market 
Street on the eve of his fortnight’s holiday, that his eye 
was caught by certain railway bills, and in very idleness 
of mind he calculated that he might be home for Christ- 
mas if he started on the morrow. The fancy thrilled 
him with desire, and in one moment he decided he 
would go. 

There was much to be done : his portmanteau to be 
packed, a credit to be got from the bank, where he was a 
wealthy customer, and certain offices to be transacted for 
that other bank in which he was an humble clerk ; and it 
chanced, in conformity with human nature, that out of all 
this business it was the last that came to be neglected. 
Night found him, not only equipped with money of his 
own, but once more (as on that former occasion) saddled 
with a considerable sum of other people’s. 

Now it chanced there lived in the same boarding-house 
a fellow-clerk of his, an honest fellow, with what is called 
a weakness for drink — though it might, in this case, have 
been called a strength, for the victim had been drunk for 
weeks together without the briefest intermission. To this 


THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 25 

unfortunate John intrusted a letter with an enclosure of 
bonds, addressed to the bank manager. Even as he did 
so he thought he perceived a certain haziness of eye and 
speech in his trustee ; but he was too hopeful to be stayed, 
silenced the voice of warning in his bosom, and with one 
and the same gesture committed the money to the clerk, 
and himself into the hands of destiny. 

I dwell, even at the risk of tedium, on John’s minutest 
errors, his case being so perplexing to the moralist ; but we 
have done with them now, the roll is closed, the reader 
has the worst of our poor hero, and I leave him to judge 
for himself whether he or John has been the less deserv- 
ing. Henceforth we have to follow the spectacle of a 
man who was a mere whip-top for calamity ; on whose 
unmerited misadventures not even the humorist can 
look without pity, and not even the philosopher without 
alarm. 

That same night the clerk entered upon a bout of drunk- 
enness so consistent as to surprise even his intimate ac- 
quaintance. He was speedily ejected from the boarding- 
house ; deposited his portmanteau with a perfect stranger, 
who did not even catch his name ; wandered he knew not 
where, and was at last hove-to, all standing, in a hospital 
at Sacramento. There, under the impenetrable alias of 
the number of his bed, the crapulous being lay for some 
more days unconscious of all things, and of one thing in 
particular : that the police were after him. Two months 
had come and gone before the convalescent in the Sacra- 
mento hospital was identified with Kirkman, the abscond- 
ing San Francisco clerk ; even then, there must elapse 
nearly a fortnight more till the perfect stranger could be 
hunted up, the portmanteau recovered, and John’s letter 
carried at length to its destination, the seal still unbroken, 
the enclosure still intact. 

Meanwhile, John had gone upon his holidays without 
a word, which was irregular ; and there had disappeared 
with him a certain sum of money, which was out of all 


26 THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON, 


bounds of palliation. But he was known to be careless, 
and believed to be honest ; the manager besides had a re- 
gard for him ; and little was said, although something was 
no doubt thought, until the fortnight was finally at an end, 
and the time had come for John to reappear. Then, in- 
deed, the affair began to look black ; and when inquiries 
were made, and the penniless clerk was found to have 
amassed thousands of dollars, and kept them secretly in a 
rival establishment, the stoutest of his friends abandoned 
him, the books were overhauled for traces of ancient and 
artful fraud, and though none were found, there still pre- 
vailed a general impression of loss. The telegraph was 
set in motion ; and the correspondent of the bank in Edin- 
burgh, for which place it was understood that John had 
armed himself with extensive credits, was warned to com- 
municate with the police. 

Now this correspondent was a friend of Mr. Nicholson’s; 
he was well acquainted with the tale of John’s calamitous 
disappearance from Edinburgh ; and putting one thing 
with another, hasted with the first word of this scandal, not 
to the police, but to his friend. The old gentleman had 
long regarded his son as one dead ; John’s place had been 
taken, the memory of his faults had already fallen to be 
one of those old aches, which awaken again indeed upon 
occasion, but which we can always vanquish by an effort 
of the will ; and to have the long lost resuscitated in a 
fresh disgrace was doubly bitter. 

“ Macewen,” said the old man, “ this must be hushed 
up, if possible. If I give you a check for this sum, about 
which they are certain, could you take it on yourself to let 
the matter rest ? ” 

“ I will,” said Macewen. “ I will take the risk of it.” 

“You understand,” resumed Mr. Nicholson, speaking 
precisely, but with ashen lips, “ I do this for my family, 
not for that unhappy young man. If it should turn out 
that these suspicions are correct, and he has embezzled 
large sums, he must lie on his bed as he has made it.” 


THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON, 27 

And then looking up at Macewen with a nod, and one of 
his strange smiles : “ Good-by,” said he ; and Macewen, 
perceiving the case to be too grave for consolation, took 
himself off, and blessed God on his way home that he was 
childless. 


CHAPTER V. 


THE prodigal’s RETURN. 

By a little after noon on the eve of Christmas, John had 
left his portmanteau in the cloak-room, and stepped forth 
into Prince’s Street with a wonderful expansion of the 
soul, such as men enjoy on the completion of long-nour- 
ished schemes. He w'as at home again, incognito and 
rich ; presently he could enter his father’s house by means 
of the pass-key, which he had piously preserved through 
all his wanderings ; he would throw down the borrowed 
money ; there would be a reconciliation, the details of 
which he frequently arranged ; and he saw himself, dur- 
ing the next month, made welcome in many stately houses 
at many frigid dinner-parties, taking his share in the con- 
versation with the freedom of the man and the traveller, 
and laying down the law upon finance with the authority 
of the successful investor. But this programme was not 
to be begun before evening — not till just before dinner, 
indeed, at which meal the reassembled family were to sit 
roseate, and the best wine, the modern fatted calf, should 
flow for the prodigal’s return. 

Meanwhile he walked familiar streets, merry reminis- 
cences crowding round him, -sad ones also, both with the 
same surprising pathos. The keen frosty air ; the low, 
rosy, wintry sun ; the castle, hailing him like an old ac- 
quaintance ; the names of friends on door-plates ; the 
sight of friends whom he seemed to recognize, and whom 
he eagerly avoided, in the streets ; the pleasant chant of 
the north country accent ; the dome of St. George’s re- 
minding him of his last penitential moments in the lane. 


THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 29 


and of that King of Glory whose name had echoed ever 
since in the saddest corner of his memory ; and the gutters 
where he had learned to slide, and the shop where he had 
bought his skates, and the stones on which he had trod, 
and the railings in which he had rattled his clachan as he 
went to school ; and all those thousand and one nameless 
particulars, which the eye sees without noting, which the 
memory keeps indeed yet without knowing, and which, 
taken one with another, build up for us the aspect of the 
place that we call home : all these besieged him, as he 
went, with both delight and sadness. 

His* first visit was for Houston, who had a house on Re- 
gent’s Terrace, kept for him in old days by an aunt. The 
door was opened (to his surprise) upon the chain, and a 
voice asked him from within what he wanted. 

“ I want Mr. Houston — Mr. Alan Houston,” said he. 

“And who are ye ? ” said the voice. 

“ This is most extraordinary,” thought John ; and then 
aloud he told his name. 

“No young Mr. John ?” cried the voice, with a sudden 
increase of Scotch accent, testifying to a friendlier feeling. 

“The very same,” said John. 

And the old butler removed his defences, remarking 
only, “ I thocht ye were that man.” But his master was 
not there ; he was staying, it appeared, at the house in 
Murrayfield ; and though the butler would have been glad 
enough to have taken his place and given all the news of 
the family, John, struck with a little chill, was eager to be 
gone. Only, the door was scarce closed again, before he 
regretted that he had nofasked about “that man.” 

He was to pay no more visits till he had seen his father 
and made all well at home ; Alan had been the only possi- 
ble exception, and John had not time to go as far as Mur- 
rayfield. But here ‘he was on Regent’s Terrace ; there 
was nothing to prevent him going round the end of the 
hill, and looking from without on the Mackenzies’ house. 
As he went, he reflected that Flora must now be a woman 


30 THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON, 

of near his own age, and it was within the bounds of 
possibility that she was married ; but this dishonorable 
doubt he dammed down. 

There was the house, sure enough ; but the door was of 
another color, and what was this — two door-plates ? He 
drew nearer ; the top one bore, with dignified simplicity, 
the words, “ Mr. Proudfoot the lower one was more ex- 
plicit, and informed the passer-by that here was likewise 
the abode of ‘‘Mr. J. A. Dunlop Proudfoot, Advocate.” 
The Proudfoots must be rich, for no advocate could look 
to have much business in so remote a quarter; and John 
hated them for their wealth and for their name, and for 
the sake of the house they desecrated with their presence. 
He remembered a Proudfoot he had seen at school, not 
known : a little, whey-faced urchin, the despicable mem- 
ber of some lower class. Could it be this abortion that 
had climbed to be an advocate, and now lived in the birth- 
place of Flora and the home of John’s tenderest memories? 
The chill that had first seized upon him when he heard of 
Houston’s absence deepened and struck inward. For a 
moment, as he stood under the doors of that estranged 
house, and looked east and west along the solitary pave- 
ment of the Royal Terrace, where not a cat was stirring, 
the sense of solitude and desolation took him by the 
throat, and he wished himself in San Francisco. 

And then the figure he made, with his decent portliness, 
his whiskers, the money in his purse, the excellent cigar 
that he now lighted, recurred to his mind in consolatory 
comparison with that of a certain maddened lad who, on a 
certain spring Sunday ten years^before, and in the hour of 
church-time silence, had stolen from that city by the Glas- 
gow road. In the face of these changes, it were impious 
to doubt fortune’s kindness. All would be well yet ; the 
Mackenzies would be found. Flora, younger and lovelier 
and kinder than before ; Alan would be found, and would 
have so nicely discriminated his behavior as to have grown, 
on the one hand, into a valued friend of Mr. Nicholson’s, 


THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 31 

and to have remained, upon the other, of that exact shade 
of joviality which John desired in his companions. And 
so, once more, John fell to work discounting the delightful 
future : his first appearance in the family pew ; his first 
visit to his uncle Greig, who thought himself so great a 
financier, and on whose purblind Edinburgh eyes John 
was to let in the dazzling daylight of the West ; and the 
details in general of that unrivalled transformation scene, 
in which he was to display to all Edinburgh a portly and 
successful gentleman in the shoes of the derided fugi- 
tive. 

The time began to draw near when his father would 
have returned from the office, and it would be the prodi- 
gal’s cue to enter. He strolled westward by Albany Street, 
facing the sunset embers, pleased, he knew not why, to 
move in that cold air and indigo twilight, starred with 
street-lamps. But there was one more disenchantment 
waiting him by the way. 

At the corner of Pitt Street he paused to light a fresh 
cigar ; the vesta threw, as he did so, a strong light upon 
his features, and a man of about his own age stopped at 
sight of it. 

“I think your name must be Nicholson,” said the 
stranger. 

It was too late to avoid recognition ; and besides, as 
John was now actually on the way home, it hardly mat- 
tered, and he gave way to the impulse of his nature. 

“ Great Scott ! ” he cried, “ Beatson ! ” and shook hands 
with warmth. It scarce seemed he was repaid in kind. 

“ So you’re home again ? ” said Beatson. “ Where have 
you been all this long time?” 

“In the States,” said John — “California. I’ve made 
my pile, though ; and it suddenly struck me it would be a 
noble scheme to come home for Christmas.” 

“ I see,” said Beatson. “ Well, I hope we’ll see some- 
thing of you now’ you’re here.” 

“ Oh, I guess so,” said John, a little frozen. 


32 THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 

“ Well, ta-ta,” concluded Beatson, and he shook hands 
again and went. 

This was a cruel first experience. It was idle to blink 
facts : here was John home again, and Beatson — Old Beat- 
son — did not care a rush. He recalled Old Beatson in the 
past — that merry and affectionate lad — and their joint ad- 
ventures and mishaps, the window they had broken with a 
catapult in India Place, the escalade of the castle rock, 
and many another inestimable bond of friendship ; and 
his hurt surprise grew deeper. Well^ after all, it was only 
on a man’s own family that he could count ; blood was 
thicker than water, he remembered ; and the net result of 
this encounter was to bring him to the doorstep of his 
father’s house, with tenderer and softer feelings. 

The night had come ; the fanlight over the door shone 
bright ; the two windows of the dining-room where the 
cloth was being laid, and the three windows of tlie draw- 
ing-room where Maria would be waiting dinner, glowed 
softlier through yellow blinds. It was like a vision of the 
past. All this time of his absence, life had gone forward 
with an equal foot, and the fires and the gas had been 
lighted, and the meals spread, at the accustomed hours. 
At the accustomed hour, too, the bell had sounded thrice 
to call the family to worship. And at the thought, a pang 
of regret for his demerit seized him ; he remembered the 
things that were good and that he had neglected, and the 
things that were evil and that he had loved ; and it was 
with a prayer upon his lips that he mounted the steps and 
thrust the key into the key-hole. 

He stepped into the lighted hall, shut the door softly 
behind him, and stood there fixed in wonder. No surprise 
of strangeness could equal the surprise of that complete 
familiarity. There was the bust of Chalmers near the 
stair-railings, there was the clothes-brush in the accus- 
tomed place ; and there, on the hat-stand, hung hats and 
coats that must surely be the same as he remembered. 
Ten years dropped from his life, as a pin may slip between 


THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 33 

the fingers ; and the ocean and the mountains, and the 
mines, and crowded marts and mingled races of San Fran- 
cisco, and his own fortune and his own disgrace, became, 
for that one moment, the figures of a dream that was 
over. 

He took off his hat, and moved mechanically toward the 
stand ; and there he found a small change that was a great 
one to him. The pin that had been his from boyhood, 
where he had flung his balmoral when he loitered home 
from the academy, and his first hat when he came briskly 
back from college or the office — his pin was occupied. 
“ They might have at least respected my pin ! ” he 
thought, and he was moved as by a slight, and began at 
once to recollect that he was here an interloper, in a 
strange house, which he had entered almost by a burglary, 
and where at any moment he might be scandalously chal- 
lenged. 

He moved at once, his hat still in his hand, to the door 
of his father’s room, opened it, and entered. Mr. Nichol- 
son sat in the same place and posture as on that last Sun- 
day morning ; only he was older, and grayer, and sterner ; 
and as he now glanced up and caught the eye of his son, 
a strange commotion and a dark flush sprung into his 
face. 

“ Father,” said John, steadily, and even cheerfully, for 
this was a moment against which he was long ago pre- 
pared, ‘‘father, here I am, and here is the money that I 
took from you. I have come back to ask your forgive- 
ness, and to stay Cliristmas with you and the children.” 

“ Keep your money,” said the father, “ and go ! ” 

“ Father !” cried John; “for God’s sake don’t receive 
me this way. I’ve come for ” 

“Understand me,” interrupted Mr. Nicholson; “you 
are no son of mine ; and in the sight of God, I wash my 
hands of you. One last thing I will tell you ; one warning 
I will give you ; all is discovered, and you are being liunted 
for your crimes ; if you are still at large it is thanks to me ; 

3 


34 the misadventures OF JOHN NICHOLSON 


but I have done all that I mean to do ; and from this time 
forth I would not raise one finger — not one finger — to save 
you from the gallows ! And now,” with a low voice of ab- 
solute authority, and a single weighty gesture of the finger, 
^‘and now — go ! ” 



CHAPTER VI. 


THE HOUSE AT MURRAYFIELD. 

How John passed the evening, in what windy confusion 
of mind, in what squalls of anger and lulls of sick collapse, 
in what pacing of streets and plunging into public-houses, 
it would profit little to relate. His misery, if it were not 
progressive, yet tended in no way to diminish ; for in pro- 
portion as grief and indignation abated, fear began to take 
their place. At first, his father’s menacing words lay by 
in some safe drawer of memory, biding their hour. At 
first, John was all thwarted affection and blighted hope ; 
next bludgeoned vanity raised its head again, with twenty 
mortal gashes ; and the father was disowned even as he had 
disowned the son. What was this regular course of life 
that John should have admired it ? what were these clock- 
work virtues, from which love was absent ? Kindness was 
the test, kindness the aim and soul ; and judged by such a 
standard, the discarded prodigal — now rapidly drownii% 
his sorrows and his reason in successive drams — was a creat- 
ure of a lovelier morality than his self-righteous father. 
Yes, he was the better man ; ^he felt it, glowed with the 
consciousness, and entering a public-house at the corner of 
Howard Place (whither he had somehow wandered) he 
pledged his own virtues in a glass — perhaps the fourth since 
his dismissal. Of that he knew nothing, keeping no ac- 
count of what he did or where he went ; and in the general 
crashing hurry of his nerves, unconscious of the approach 
of intoxication. Indeed, it is a question whether he were 
really growing intoxicated, or whether at first the spirits 
did not even sober him. For it was even as he drained 


36 THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 

this last glass that his father's ambiguous and menacing 
words — popping from their hiding-place in memory — 
startled him like a hand laid upon his shoulder. “ Crimes, 
hunted, the gallows.” They were ugly words ; in the ears 
of an innocent man, perhaps all the uglier ; for if some 
judicial error were in act against him, who should set a 
limit to its grossness or to how far it might be pushed ? 
Not John, indeed ; he was no believer in the powers of in- 
nocence, his cursed experience pointing in quite other 
ways ; and his fears, once wakened, grew with every hour 
and hunted him about the city streets. 

It was, perhaps, nearly nine at night ; he had eaten 
nothing since lunch, he had drank a good deal, and he was 
exhausted by emotion, when the thought of Houston came 
into his head. He turned, not merely to the man as a 
friend but to his house as a place of refuge. The danger 
that threatened him was still so vague that he knew neither 
what to fear nor where he might expect it ; but tliis much 
at least seemed undeniable, that a private house was safer 
than a public inn. Moved by these counsels, he turned at 
once to the Caledonian Station, passed (not without alarm) 
into the bright lights of the approach, redeemed his port- 
manteau from the cloak-room, and was soon wliirling in a 
cab along the Glasgow road. The change of movement 
artid position, the sight of the lamps twinkling to the rear, 
and the smell of damp and mould and rotten straw which 
clung about the vehicle, wrought in him strange alterna- 
tions of lucidity and mortal giddiness. 

“I have been drinking,” he discovered; “I must go 
straight to bed, and sleep.” And he thanked Heaven for 
the drowsiness that came upon his mind in waves. 

From one of these spells he was wakened by the stop- 
page of the cab ; and, getting down, found himself in quite 
a country road, the last lamp of the suburb shining some 
way below, and the high walls of a garden rising before 
him in the dark. The Lodge (as the place was named) 
stood, indeed, very solitary. To the south it adjoined 


THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 37 

% 

another house, but standing in so large a garden as to be 
well out of cry ; on all other sides, open fields stretched 
upward to the woods of Corstorphine Hill, or backward 
to the dells of Ravelston, or downward toward the valley 
of the Leith. The effect of seclusion was aided by the 
great height of the garden walls, which were, indeed, con- 
ventual, and, as John had tested in former days, defied the 
climbing school-boy. The lamp of the cab threw a gleam 
upon the door and the not brilliant handle of the bell. 

“ Shall I ring for ye ? " said the cabman, who had de- 
scended from his perch and was slapping his chest, for the 
night was bitter. 

“1 wish you would," said John, putting his hand to his 
brow in one of his accesses of giddiness. 

The man pulled at the handle, and the clanking of the 
bell replied from further in the garden ; twice and thrice 
he did it, with sufficient intervals ; in the great, frosty si- 
lence of the night, the sounds fell sharp and small. 

“ Does he expect ye ? " asked the driver, with that man- 
ner of familiar interest that well became his port-wine face ; 
and when John had told him no, “Well, then," said the 
cabman, “if ye’ll tak’ my advice of it, we’ll just gang back. 
And that’s disinterested, mind ye, for my stables are in the 
Glesgie road." 

“The servants must hear,” said John. 

“ Hout ! ’’ said the driver. “ He keeps no servants here, 
man. They’re a’ in the town house ; I drive him often ; 
it’s just a kind of a hermitage, this." 

“Give me the bell," said John ; and he plucked at it 
like a man desperate. 

The clamor had not yet subsided before they heard steps 
upon the gravel, and a voice of singular nervous irritabil- 
ity cried to them through the door, “ Who are you, and 
W'hat do you want ?’’ 

“Alan,” said John, “it’s me — it’s Fatty — John, you 
know. I’m just come home, and I’ve come to stay with 
you." 


38 THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 

There was no reply for a moment, and then the door was 
opened. 

“ Get the portmanteau down,” said John to the driver. 

“ Do nothing of the kind,” said Alan ; and then to John, 
“ Come in here a moment. I want to speak to you.” 

John entered the garden, and the door was closed be- 
hind him. A candle stood on the gravel walk, winking a 
little in the draughts ; it threw inconstant sparkles on the 
clumped holly, struck the light and darkness to and fro 
like a veil on Alan’s features, and sent his shadow hovering 
behind him. All beyond was inscrutable ; and John’s 
dizzy brain rocked with the shadow. Yet even so, it struck 
him that Alan was pale, and his voice, when he spoke, un- 
natural. 

“ What brings you here to-night ? ” he began. I don’t 
want, God knows, to seem unfriendly ; but I cannot take 
you in, Nicholson ; I cannot do it.” 

Alan,” said John, “ you’ve just got to ! You don’t know 
the mess I’m in ; the governor’s turned me out, and I 
daren’t show my face in an inn, because they’re down on 
me for murder or something ! ” 

“For what?” cried Alan, starting. 

“Murder, I believe,” says John. 

“Murder!” repeated Alan, and passed his hand over 
his eyes. “What was that you were saying?” he asked 
again. 

“That they were down on me,” said John. “I’m ac- 
cused of murder, by what I can make out ; and I’ve really 
had a dreadful day of it, Alan, and I can’t sleep on the 
'road-side on a night like this — at least, not with a port- 
manteau,” he pleaded. 

“ Hush ! ” said Alan, with his head on one side ; and 
then, “Did you hear nothing ?” he asked. 

“No,” said John, thrilling, he knew not why, with com- 
municated terror. “No, I heard nothing; why?” And 
then, as there was no answer, he reverted to his pleading: 
“But I say, Alan, you’ve just got to take me in. I’ll go 


THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON 39 

right away to bed if you have anything to do. I seem 
to have been drinking ; I was that knocked over. I 
wouldn’t turn you away, Alan, if you were down on your 
luck.” 

*‘No?” returned Alan. “Neither will I you, then. 
Come and let’s get your portmanteau.” 

The cabman was paid, and drove off down the long, 
lamp-lighted hill, and the two friends stood on the side- 
walk beside the portmanteau till the last rumble of the 
wheels had died in silence. It seemed to John as though 
Alan attached importance to this departure of the cab ; 
and John, who was in no state to criticise, shared pro- 
foundly in the feeling. 

When the stillness was once more perfect, Alan shoul- 
dered the portmanteau, carried it in, and shut and locked 
the garden door ; and then, once more, abstraction seemed 
to fall upon him, and he stood with his hand on the key, 
until the cold began to nibble at John’s fingers. 

“ Why are we standing here ? ” 

“Eh?” said Alan, blankly. 

“ Why, man, you don’t seem yourself,” said the other. 

“ No, I’m not myself,” said Alan ; and he sat down on 
the portmanteau and put his face in his hands. 

John stood beside him swaying a little, and looking 
about him at the swaying shadows, the flitting sparkles, 
and the steady stars overhead, until the windless cold be- 
gan to touch him through his clothes on the bare skin. 
Even in his bemused intelligence, wonder began to 
awake. 

“ I say, let’s come on to the house,” he said at last. 

“Yes, let’s come on to the house,” repeated Alan. 

And he rose at once, reshouldered the portmanteau, and 
taking the candle in his other hand, moved forward to the 
Lodge. This was a long, low building, smothered in 
creepers ; and now, except for some chinks of light be- 
tween the dining-room shutters, it was plunged in dark- 
ness and silence. 


40 THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON 

In the hall Alan lighted another candle, gave it to John, 
and opened the door of a bedroom. 

“ Here,” said he; “go to bed. Don’t mind me, John. 
You’ll be sorry for me when you know\” 

“Wait a bit,” returned John ; “ I’ve got so cold with all 
that standing about Let’s go into the dining-room a 
minute. Just one glass to warm me, Alan.” 

On the table in the hall stood a glass, and a bottle with 
a whiskey label on a tray. It was plain the bottle had 
been just opened, for the cork and corkscrew lay beside 
it 

“ Take that,” said Alan, passing John the whiskey, and 
then -with a certain roughness pushed his friend into the 
bedroom, and closed the door behind him. 

John stood amazed ; then he shook the bottle, and, to 
his further wonder, found it partly empty. Three or four 
glasses were gone. Alan must have uncorked a bottle of 
whiskey and drank three or four glasses one after the other, 
without sitting down, for there was no chair, and that in 
his own cold lobby on this, freezing night ! It fully ex- 
plained his eccentricities, John reflected sagely, as he mixed 
himself a grog. Poor Alan ! He was drunk ; and what a 
dreadful thing was drink, and what a slave to it poor Alan 
was, to drink in this unsociable, uncomfortable fashion ! 
The man who would drink alone, except for health’s sake 
— as John was now doing — was a man utterly lost. He 
took the grog out, and felt hazier, but warmer. It was 
hard work opening the portmanteau and finding his night 
things ; and before he was undressed, the cold had struck 
home to him once more. “Well,” said he ; “just a drop 
more. There’s no sense in getting ill with all this other 
trouble.” And presently dreamless slumber buried him. 

When John awoke it was day. The low winter sun was 
already in the heavens, but his watch had stopped, and it 
was impossible to tell the hour exactly. Ten, he guessed 
it, and made haste to dress, dismal reflections crowding on 
his mind. But it was less from terror than from regret 


THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 41 


that he now suffered ; and with his regret there were min- 
gled cutting pangs of penitence. There had fallen upon 
him a blow, cruel, indeed, but yet only the punishment of 
old misdoing ; and he had rebelled and plunged into fresh 
sin. The rod had been used to chasten, and he had bit the 
chastening fingers. His father was right ; John had justi- 
fied him ; John was no guest for decent people’s houses, 
and no fit associate for decent people’s children. And had 
a broader hint been needed, there was the case of his old 
friend. John was no drunkard, though he could at times 
exceed ; and the picture of Houston drinking neat spirits at 
his hall-table struck him with something like disgust. He 
hung back from meeting his old friend. He could have 
wished he had not come to him ; and yet, even now, where 
else was he to turn ? 

These musings occupied him while he dressed, and ac- 
companied him into the lobby of the house. The door 
stood open on the garden ; doubtless, Alan had stepped 
. forth ; and John did as he supposed his friend had done. 
The ground was hard as iron, the frost still rigorous ; as he 
brushed among the hollies, icicles jingled and glittered 
in their fall ; and wherever he went, a volley of eager spar- 
rows followed him. Here were Christmas weather and 
Christmas morning duly met, to the delight of children, 
i This was the day of reunited families, the day to which he 
i had so long looked forward, thinking to awake in his own 
bed in Randolph Crescent, reconciled with all men and re- 
peating the footprints of his youth ; and here he was alone, 
pacing the alleys of a wintry garden and filled with peni- 
: teiitial thoughts. 

And that reminded liim : why was he alone ? and where 
j was Alan ? The thought of the festal morning and the 
j, due salutations reawakened his desire for his friend, and he 
|j began to call for him by name. As the sound of his voice 
l! died away, he was aware of the greatness of the silence 
i that environed him. But for the twittering of the sparrows 
I and the crunching of his own feet upon the frozen snow, 


42 THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 

the whole windless world of air hung over him entranced, 
and the stillness weighed upon his mind with a horror of 
solitude. 

Still calling at intervals, but now with a moderated 
voice, he made the hasty circuit of the garden, and finding 
neither man nor trace of man in all its evergreen coverts, 
turned at last to the house. About the house the silence 
seemed to deepen strangely. The door, indeed, stood open 
as before ; but the windows were still shuttered, the chim- 
neys breathed no stain into the bright air, there sounded 
abroad none of that low stir (perhaps audible rather to the 
ear of the spirit than to the ear of the flesh) by which a 
house announces and betrays its human lodgers. And yet 
Alan must be there — Alan locked in drunken slumbers, 
forgetful of the return of day, of the holy season, and of 
the friend whom he had so coldly received and was now so 
churlishly neglecting. John’s disgust redoubled at the 
thought ; but hunger was beginning to grow stronger than 
repulsion, and as a step to breakfast, if nothing else, he 
must find and arouse this sleeper. 

He made the circuit of the bedroom quarters. All, until 
he came to Alan’s chamber, were locked from without, and 
bore the marks of a prolonged disuse. But Alan’s was a 
room in commission, filled with clothes, knickknacks, let- 
ters, books, and the conveniences of a solitary man. The 
fire had been lighted ; but it had long ago burned out, and 
the ashes were stone cold. The bed had been made, but 
it had not been slept in. 

Worse and worse, then ; Alan must have fallen where he 
sat, and now sprawled brutishly, no doubt, upon the din- 
ing-room floor. 

The dining-room was a very long apartment, and was 
reached through a passage ; so that John, upon his en- 
trance, brought but little light with him, and must move 
toward the windows with spread arms, groping and knock- 
ing on the furniture. Suddenly he tripped and fell his 
length over a prostrate body. It was what he had looked 


THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 43 

for, yet it shocked him ; and he marvelled that so rough an 
impact should not have kicked a groan out of the drunk- 
ard. Men had killed themselves ere now in such excesses, 
a dreary and degraded end that made John shudder. 
What if Alan were dead ? There would be a Christmas- 
day ! 

By this, John had his hand upon the shutters, and fling- 
ing them back, beheld once again the blessed face of the 
day. Even by that light the room had a discomfortable 
air. The chairs were scattered, and one had been over- 
thrown ; the table-cloth, laid as if for dinner, was twitched 
upon one side, and some of the dishes had fallen to the 
floor. Behind the table lay the drunkard, still unaroused, 
only one foot visible to John. 

But now that light was in the room, the worst seemed 
over ; it was a disgusting business, but not more than dis- 
gusting ; and it was with no great apprehension that John 
proceeded to make the circuit of the table : his last com- 
paratively tranquil moment for that day. No sooner had 
he turned the corner, no sooner had his eyes alighted on 
the body, than he gave a smothered, breathless cry, and 
fled out of the room and out of the house. 

It was not Alan who lay there, but a man well up in 
years, of stern countenance and iron-gray locks ; and it 
was no drunkard, for the body lay in a black pool of blood, 
and the open eyes stared upon the ceiling. 

To and fro walked John before the door. The extreme 
sharpness of the air acted on his nerves like an astringent, 
and braced them swiftly. Presently, he not relaxing in 
his disordered walk, the images began to come clearer and 
stay longer in his fancy ; and next the power of thought 
came back to him, and the horror and danger of his situa- 
tion rooted him to the ground. 

He grasped his forehead, and staring on one spot of 
gravel, pieced together what he knew and what he sus- 
pected. Alan had murdered some one: possibly “ that 
man ” against whom the butler chained the door in Re- 


44 THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 


gent’s Terrace ; possibly another ; some one at least : a 
human soul, whom it was death to slay and whose blood 
lay spilled upon the floor. This was the reason of the 
whiskey drinking in the passage, of his unwillingness to 
welcome John, of his strange behavior and bewildered 
words ; this was why he had started at and harped upon 
the name of murder ; this was why he had stood and 
hearkened, or sat and covered his eyes, in the black night. 
And now he was gone, now he had basely fled ; and to all 
his perplexities and dangers John stood heir. 

“Let me think — let me think, he said, aloud, impa- 
tiently, even pleadingly, as if to some merciless inter- 
rupter. In the turmoil of his wits, a thousand hints and 
hopes and threats and terrors dinning continuously in his 
ears, he was like one plunged in the hubbub of a crowd. 
How was he to remember — he, who had not a thought to 
spare — that he was himself the author, as well as the the- 
atre, of so much confusion ? But in hours of trial the junto 
of man’s nature is dissolved, and anarchy succeeds. 

It was plain he must stay no longer where he was, for 
here was a new Judicial Error in the very making. It was 
not so plain where he must go, for the old Judicial Error, 
vague as a cloud, appeared to fill the habitable world ; 
whatever it might be, it watched for him, full-grown, in 
Edinburgh ; it must have had its birth in San Francisco ; 
it stood guard no doubt, like a dragon, at the bank where 
he should cash his credit ; and though there were doubt- 
less many other places, who should say in which of them 
it was not ambushed? No, he could not tell where he was 
to go ; he must not lose time on these insolubilities. Let 
him go back to the beginning. It was plain he must stay 
no longer where he was. It was plain, too, that he must 
not flee as he was, for he could not carry his portmanteau, 
and to flee and leave it, was to plunge deeper in the mire. 
He must go, leave the house unguarded, find a cab, and 
return — return after an absence. Had he courage for that ? 
And just then he spied a stain about a hand’s-breadth 


THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 45 

on his trouser-leg, and reached his finger down to touch it. 
The finger was stained red ; it was blood ; he stared upon 
it with disgust, and awe, and terror, and in the sharpness 
of the new sensation, fell instantly to act. 

He cleansed his finger in the snow, returned into the 
house, drew near with hushed footsteps to the dining-room 
door, and shut and locked it. Then he breathed a little 
freer, for here at least was an oaken barrier between him- 
self and what he feared. Next, he hastened to his room, 
tore off the spotted trousers which seemed in his eyes a 
link to bind him to the gallows, flung them in a corner, 
donned another pair, breathlessly crammed his night 
things into his portmanteau, locked it, swung it with an 
effort from the ground, and with a rush of relief, came 
forth again under the open heavens. 

The portmanteau, being of occidental build, was no 
feather-weight ; it had distressed the powerful Alan ; and 
as for John, he was crushed under its bulk, and the sweat 
broke upon him thickly. Twice he must set it down to 
rest before he reached the gate ; and when he had come 
so far he must do as Alan did, and take his seat upon one 
corner. Here, then, he sat awhile and panted ; but now 
his thoughts were sensibly lightened ; now, with the trunk 
standing just inside the door, some part of his dissociation 
from the house of crime had been effected, and the cab- 
man need not pass the garden wall. It was wonderful 
liow that relieved him ; for the house, in his eyes, was a 
place to strike the most cursory beholder with suspicion, 
as though the very windo>vs had cried murder. 

But there was to be no remission of the strokes of fate. 
As he thus sat, taking breath in the shadow of the wall and 
hopped about by sparrows, it chanced that his eye roved 
to the fastening of the door ; and what he saw plucked 
him to his feet. The thing locked with a spring ; once 
the door was closed, the bolt shot of itself ; and without a 
key, there was no means of entering from without. 

He saw himself obliged to one of two distasteful and 


46 THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON 


perilous alternatives ; either to shut the door altogether 
and set his portmanteau out upon the way-side, a wonder 
to all beholders ; or to leave the door ajar, so that any 
thievish tramp or holiday school-boy might stray in and 
stumble on the grisly secret. To the last, as the least 
desperate, his mind inclined ; but he must first insure him- 
self that he was unobserved. He peered out, and down 
the long road : it lay dead empty. He went to the corner 
of the by-road that comes by way of Dean ; there also not 
a passenger was stirring. Plainly it was, now or never, the 
high tide of his affairs ; and he drew the door as close as 
he durst, slipped a pebble in the chink, and made off down- 
hill to find a cab. 

Half-way down a gate opened, and a troop of Christmas 
children sallied forth in the most cheerful humor, followed 
more soberly by a smiling mother. 

“ And this is Christmas-day ! ” thought John ; and could 
have laughed aloud in tragic bitterness of heart. 


CHAPTER VII. 


A TRAGI-COMEDY IN A CAB. 

In front of Donaldson's Hospital, John counted it good 
fortune to perceive a cab a great way off, and by much 
shouting and waving of his arm to catch the notice of the 
driver. He counted it good fortune, for the time was long 
to him till he should have done forever with the Lodge ; 
and the further he must go to find a cab, the greater the 
chance that the inevitable discovery had taken place, and 
that he should return to find the garden full of angry 
neighbors. Yet when the vehicle drew up he was sensi- 
bly chagrined to recognize the port-wine cabman of the 
night before. “ Here," he could not but reflect, “ here is 
another link in the Judicial Error." 

The driver, on the other hand, was pleased to drop again 
upon so liberal a fare ; and as he was a man — the reader 
must already have perceived — of easy, not to say familiar, 
manners, he dropped at once into a vein of friendly talk, 
commenting on the weather, on the sacred season, which 
struck him chiefly in the light of a day of liberal gratuities, 
on the chance which had reunited him to a pleasing cus- 
tomer, and on the fact that John had been (as he was 
pleased to call it) visibly “ on the randan " the night be- 
fore. 

“And ye look dreidful bad the-day, sir, I must say that," 
he continued. “There’s nothing like a dram for ye — if 
ye’ll take my advice of it ; and bein’ as it’s Christmas, I’m 
no saying," he added, with a fatherly smile, “ but what I 
would join ye mysel’." 

John had listened with a sick heart. 


48 THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 


** ril give you a dram when we’ve got through,” said he, 
affecting a sprightliness which sat on him most unhand- 
somely, “ and not a drop till then. Business first, and 
pleasure afterward.” 

With this promise the jarvey was prevailed upon to 
clamber to his place and drive, with hideous deliberation, 
to the door of the Lodge. There were no signs as yet of 
any public emotion ; only, two men stood not far off in 
talk, and their presence, seen from afar, set John’s pulses 
buzzing. He might have spared himself his fright, for 
the pair were lost in some dispute of a theological com- 
plexion, and with lengthened upper lip and enumerating 
fingers, pursued the matter of their difference, and paid no 
heed to John. 

But the cabman proved a thorn in the flesh. Nothing 
would keep him on his perch ; he must clamber down, 
comment upon the pebble in the door (which he regarded 
as an ingenious but unsafe device), help John with the 
portmanteau, and enliven matters with a flow of speech, 
and especially of questions, which I thus condense : 

“ He’ll no be here himsel’, will he ? No ? Well, he’s 
an eccentric man — a fair oddity — if ye ken the expression. 
Great trouble with his tenants, they tell me. I’ve driven 
the fam’ly for years. I drove a cab at his father’s waddin’. 
What’ll your name be ? — I should ken your face. Baigrey, 
ye say? There ’were Baigreys about Gilmerton ; ye’ll be 
one of that lot ? Then this’ll be a friend’s portmantie, 
like? Why? Because the name upon it’s Nucholson ! 
Oh, if ye’re in a hurry, that’s another job. Waverley Brig’ ? 
Are ye for away ? ” 

So the friendly toper prated and questioned and kept 
John’s heart in a flutter. But to this also, as to other evils 
under the sun, there came a period ; and the victim of cir- 
cumstances began at last to rumble toward the railway 
terminus at Waverley Bridge. During the transit, he sat 
with raised glasses in the frosty chill and mouldy fetor of 
his chariot, and glanced out sidelong on the holiday face 


THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 49 

of things, the shuttered shops, and the crowds along tlie 
pavement, much as the rider in the Tyburn cart may have 
observed the concourse gathering to his execution. 

At the station his spirits rose again ; another stage of his 
escape was fortunately ended — he began to spy blue water. 
He called a railway porter, and bade him carry the port- 
manteau to the cloak-room : not that he had any notion 
of delay ; flight, instant flight was his design, no matter 
whither ; but he had determined to dismiss the cabman ere 
he named, or even chose, his destination, thus possibly 
balking the Judicial Error of another link. This was his- 
cunning aim, and now with one foot on the road-way, and 
one still on the coach-step, he made haste to put the thing 
in practice, and plunged his hand into his trousers-pocket. 

There was nothing there ! 

Oh, yes ; this time he was to blame. He should have 
remembered, and when he deserted his blood-stained pan- 
taloons he should not have deserted along with them his 
purse. Make the most of his error, and then compare it 
with the punishment ! Conceive liis new position, for I 
lack words to picture it ; conceive him condemned to re- 
turn to that house, from the very thought of which his soul 
revolted, and once more to expose himself to capture on 
the very scene of the misdeed : conceive him linked to the 
mouldy cab and the familiar cabman. John cursed the cab- 
man silently, and then it occurred to him that he must 
stop the incarceration of his portmanteau ; that, at least, he 
must keep close at hand, and he turned to recall the por- 
ter. But his reflections, brief as they had appeared, must 
have occupied him longer than he supposed, and there was 
the man already returning with the receipt. 

Well, that was settled ; he had lost his portmanteau also ; 
for the sixpence with which he had paid the Murrayfield 
Toll was one that had strayed alone into his waistcoat- 
pocket, and unless he once more successfully achieved the 
adventure of the house of crime, his portmanteau lay in 
the cloak-room in eternal pawn, for lack of a penny 
4 


50 THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 


fee. And then he remembered the porter, who stood 
suggestively attentive, words of gratitude hanging on his 
lips. 

John hunted right and left ; he found a coin — prayed 
God that it was a sovereign — drew it out, beheld a half- 
penny, and offered it to the porter. 

The man’s jaw dropped. 

“ It’s only a half-penny ! ” he said, startled out of railway 
decency. 

I know that,” said John, piteously. 

And here the porter recovered the dignity of man. 

“ Thank you, sir,” said he, and would have returned 
the base gratuity. But John, too, would none of it ; and 
as they struggled, who must join in but the cabman ? 

“Hoots, Mr. Baigrey,” said he, “you surely forget 
what day it is ! ” 

“ I tell you I have no change ! ” cried John. 

“ Well,” said the driver, “ and what then ? I would 
rather give a man a shillin’ on a day like this than put him 
off with a derision like a bawbee. I’m surprised at the like 
of you, Mr. Baigrey ! ” 

“ My name is not Baigrey ! ” broke out John, in mere 
childish temper and distress. 

“Ye told me it was yoursel’,” said the cabman. 

“ I know I did ; and what the devil right had you to 
ask ?” cried the unhappy one. 

“ Oh, very well,” said the driver. “ I know my place 
if you know yours — if you know yours ! ” he repeated, as 
one who should imply grave doubt ; and muttered inartic- 
ulate thunders, in which the grand old name of gentleman 
was taken seemingly in vain. 

Oh, to have been able to discharge this monster, whom 
John now perceived, with tardy clear-sightedness, to have 
begun betimes the festivities of Christmas ! But far from 
any such ray of consolation visiting the lost, he stood bare 
of help and helpers, his portmanteau sequestered in one 
place, his money deserted in another and guarded by a 


THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 51 

corpse ; himself, so sedulous of privacy, the cynosure of 
all men’s eyes about the station ; and, as if these were not 
enough mischances, he was now fallen in ill-blood with the 
beast to whom his poverty had linked him ! In ill-blood, 
as he reflected dismally, with the witness who perhaps 
might hang or save him ! There was no time to be lost ; 
he durst not linger any longer in that public spot ; and 
whether he had recourse to dignity or to conciliation, the 
remedy must be applied at once. Some happily surviving 
element of manhood moved him to the former. 

“ Let us have no more of this,” said he, his foot once 
more upon the step. ‘‘Go back to where we came from.” 

He had avoided the name of any destination, for there 
was now quite a little band of railway folk about the cab, 
and he still kept an eye upon the court of justice, and 
labored to avoid concentric evidence. But here again the 
fatal jarvey outmanoeuvred him. 

“ Back to the Ludge ? ” cried he, in shrill tones of pro- 
test. 

“Drive on at once !” roared John, and slammed the 
door behind him, so that the crazy chariot rocked and 
jingled. 

Forth trundled the cab into the Christmas streets, the 
fare within plunged in the blackness of a despair that 
neighbored on unconsciousness, the driver on the box di- 
gesting his rebuke and his customer’s duplicity. I would 
not be thought to put the pair in competition ; John’s case 
was out of all parallel. But the cabman, too, is worth the 
sympathy of the judicious ; for he was a fellow of genuine 
kindliness and a high sense of personal dignity incensed 
by drink ; and his advances had been cruelly and publicly 
rebuffed. As he drove, therefore, he counted his wrongs, 
and thirsted for sympathy and drink. Now, it chanced he 
had a friend, a publican, in Queensferry Street, from 
whom, in view of the sacredness of the occasion, he thought 
he might extract a dram. Queensferry Street lies some- 
thing off the direct road to Murrayfield. But then there 


52 THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON 

is the hilly cross-road that passes by the valley of the 
Leith and the Dean Cemetery ; and Queensferry Street is 
on the way to that. What was to hinder the cabman, since 
his horse was dumb, from choosing the cross-road, and 
calling on his friend in passing? So it was decided ; and 
the charioteer, already somewhat mollified, turned aside 
his horse to the right. 

John, meanwhile, sat collapsed, his chin sunk upon his 
chest, his mind in abeyance. The smell of the cab was 
still faintly present to his senses, and a certain leaden chill 
about his feet ; all else had disappeared in one vast op- 
pression of calamity and physical faintness. It was draw- 
ing on to noon — two-and-twenty hours since he had broken 
bread ; in the interval, he had suffered tortures of sorrow 
and alarm, and been partly tipsy ; and though it was im- 
possible to say he slept, yet when the cab stopped, and the 
cabman thrust his head into the window, his attention had 
to be recalled from depths of vacancy. 

“ If you’ll no’ stand me a dram,” said the driver, with a 
well-merited severity of tone and manner, “ I dare say 
ye’ll have no objection to my taking one mysel’ ? ” 

“ Yes — no — do what you like,” returned John ; and then, 
as he watched his tormentor mount the stairs and enter 
the whiskey-shop, there floated into his mind a sense as 
of something long ago familiar. At that he started fully 
awake, and stared at the shop-fronts. Yes, he knew them ; 
but when ? and how ? Long since, he thought ; and then, 
casting his eye through the front glass, which had been 
recently occluded by the figure of the jarvey, he beheld 
the tree-tops of the rookery in Randolph Crescent. He 
was close to home — home, where he had thought, at that 
hour, to be sitting in the well-remembered drawing-room 
in friendly converse ; and, instead ! 

It was his first impulse to drop into the bottom of the 
cab ; his next, to cover his face with his hands. So he 
sat, while the cabman toasted the publican, and the pub- 
lican toasted the cabman, and both reviewed the affairs of 


THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON 53 

the nation ; so he still sat, when his master condescended 
to return, and drive off at last down-hill, along the curve 
of Lynedoch Place ; but even so sitting, as he passed the 
end of his father’s street, he took one glance from between 
shielding fingers, and beheld a doctor’s carriage at the 
door. 

“Well, just so,” thought he; “I’ll have killed my 
father ! And this is Christmas-day ! ” 

If Mr. Nicholson died, it was down this same road he 
must journey to the grave ; and down this road, on the 
same errand, his wife had preceded him years before ; and 
many other leading citizens, with the proper trappings 
and attendance at the end. And now, in that frosty, ill- 
smelling, straw-carpeted, and ragged-cushioned cab, with 
his breath congealing on the glasses, where else was John 
himself advancing to ? 

The thought stirred his imagination, which began to 
manufacture many thousand pictures, bright and fleeting, 
like the shapes in a kaleidoscope ; and now he saw him- 
self, ruddy and comfortered, sliding in the gutter ; and, 
again, a little woe-begone, bored urchin tricked forth in 
crape and weepers, descending this same hill at the foot’s- 
pace of mourning coaches, his mother’s body just preced- 
ing him ; and yet again, his fancy, running far in front, 
showed him his destination — now standing solitary in the 
low sunshine, with the sparrows hopping on the threshold 
and the dead man within staring at the roof — and now, 
with a sudden change, thronged about with white-faced, 
hand-uplifting neighbors, and doctor bursting through 
their midst and fixing his stethoscope as he went, the po- 
liceman shaking a sagacious head beside the body. It 
was to this he feared that he was driving ; in the midst of 
this he saw himself arrive, heard himself stammer faint 
explanations, and felt the hand of the constable upon his 
shoulder. Heavens ! how he wished he had played the 
manlier part ; how he despised himself that he had fled 
that fatal neighborhood when all was quiet, and should 


54 THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON, 


now be tamely travelling back when it was thronging with 
avengers ? 

Any strong degree of passion lends, even to the dullest, 
the forces of the imagination. And so now as he dwelt on 
what was probably awaiting him at the end of this distress- 
ful drive — John, who saw things little, remembered them 
less, and could not have described them at all, beheld in 
his mind’s eye the garden of the Lodge, detailed as in a 
map ; he went to and fro in it, feeding his terrors ; he saw 
the hollies, the snowy borders, the paths where he had 
sought Alan, the high, conventual walls, the shut door — 
what ! was the door shut ? Ay, truly, he had shut it — shut 
in his money, his escape, his future life — shut it with these 
hands, and none could now open it ! He heard the snap 
of the spring-lock like something bursting in his brain, and 
sat astonied. 

And then he woke again, terror jarring through his 
vitals. This was no time to be idle ; he must be up and 
doing, he must think. Once at the end of this ridiculous 
cruise, once at the Lodge door, there would be nothing for 
it but to turn the cab and trundle back again. Why, then, 
go so far ? why add another feature of suspicion to a case 
already so suggestive ? why not turn at once ? It was easy 
to say, turn ; but whither ? He had nowhere now to go 
to ; he could never — he saw it in letters of blood — he could 
never pay that cab ; he was saddled with that cab forever. 
Oh, that cab ! his soul yearned and burned, and his bowels 
sounded to be rid of it. He forgot all other cares. He 
must first quit himself of this ill-smelling vehicle and of 
the human beast that guided it — first do that ; do that, at 
least ; do that at once. 

And just then the cab suddenly stopped, and there was 
his persecutor rapping on the front glass. John let it 
down, and beheld the port-wine countenance inflamed with 
intellectual triumph. 

“ I ken wha ye are ! ” cried the husky voice. “ I mind 
ye now. Ye’re a Nucholson. I drove ye to Hermiston to 


THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 55 


a Christmas party, and ye came back on the box, and I let 
ye drive.” 

It is a fact. John knew the man ; they had been even 
friends. His enemy, he now remembered, was a fellow of 
great good nature — endless good nature — with a boy ; why 
not with a man ? Why not appeal to his better side ? He 
grasped at the new hope. 

“ Great Scott ! and so you did,” he cried, as if in a trans- 
port of delight, his voice sounding false in his own ears. 
“Well, if that’s so. I’ve something to say to you. I’ll just 
■get out, I guess. Where are we, anyway ?” 

The driver had fluttered his ticket in the eyes of the 
branch-toll keeper, and they were now brought to on the 
highest and most solitary part of the by-road. On the 
left, a row of fieldside trees beshaded it ; on the right, it 
was bordered by naked fallows, undulating down-hill to the 
Queensferry Road ; in front, Corstorphine Hill raised its 
snow-bedabbled, darkling woods against the sky. John 
looked all about him, drinking the clear air like wine ; then 
his eyes returned to the cabman’s face as he sat, not un- 
gleefully, awaiting John’s communication, with the air of 
-one looking to be tipped. 

The features of that face were hard to read, drink had 
so swollen them, drink had so painted them, in tints that 
varied from brick red to mulberry. The small gray eyes 
blinked, the lips moved, with greed ; greed was the ruling 
passion ; and though there was some good nature, some 
genuine kindliness, a true human touch, in the old toper, 
his greed was now so set afire by hope, that all other traits 
of character lay dormant. He sat there a monument of 
gluttonous desire. 

John’s heart slowly fell. He had opened his lips, but 
he stood there and uttered nought. He sounded the well 
of his courage, and it was dry. He groped in his treasury 
of words, and it was vacant. A devil of dumbness had 
him by the throat ; the devil of terror babbled in his ears ; 
and suddenly, without a word uttered, with no conscious 


56 THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 

purpose formed in his will, John whipped about, tumbled 
over the roadside wall, and began running for his life 
across the fallows. 

He had not gone far, he was not past the midst of the 
first field, when his whole brain thundered within him, 
“ Fool ! You have your watch ! ” The shock stopped him, 
and he faced once more toward the cab. The driver was 
leaning over the wall, brandishing his whip, his face em- 
purpled, roaring like a bull. And John saw (or thought) 
that he had lost the chance. No watch would pacify the 
man’s resentment now ; he would cry for vengeance also. 
John would be had under the eye of the police ; his tale 
would be unfolded, his secret plumbed, his destiny would 
close on him at last, and forever. 

He uttered a deep sigh ; and just as the cabman, taking 
heart of grace, was beginning at last to scale the wall, his 
defaulting customer fell again to running, and disappeared 
into the further fields. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


SINGULAR INSTANCE OF THE UTILITY OF PASS-KEYS. 

Where he ran at first, John never very clearly knew ; 
nor yet how long a time elapsed ere he found himself in 
the by-road near the lodge of Ravelston, propped against 
the wall, his lungs heaving like bellows, his legs leaden- 
heavy, his mind possessed by one sole desire — to lie down 
and be unseen. He remembered the thick coverts round 
the quarry-hole pond, an untrodden corner of the world 
where he might surely find concealment till the night 
should fall. Thither he passed down the lane ; and when 
he came there, behold ! he had forgotten the frost, and the 
pond was alive with young people skating, and the pond- 
side coverts were thick with lookers-on. He looked on 
awhile himself. There was one tall, graceful maiden, skat- 
ing hand in hand with a youth, on whom she bestowed her 
bright eyes perhaps too patently ; and it was strange with 
what anger John beheld her. He could have broken forth 
in curses ; he could have stood there, like a mortified 
tramp, and shaken his fist and vented his gall upon her 
by the hour — or so he thought ; and the next moment his 
heart bled for the girl. “ Poor creature, it’s little she 
knows !” he sighed. ‘‘Let her enjoy herself while she 
can ! ” But was it possible, when Flora used to smile at 
him on the Braid ponds, she could have looked so fulsome 
to a sick-hearted bystander ? 

The thought of one quarry, in his frozen wits, suggested 
another ; and he plodded off toward Craig Leith. A wind 
had sprung up out of the northwest ; it was cruel keen, 
it dried him like a fire, and racked his finger-joints. It 


58 THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON, 

brought clouds, too ; pale, swift, hurrying clouds, that 
blotted heaven and shed gloom upon the earth. He 
scrambled up among the hazeled rubbish heaps that sur- 
round the caldron of the quarry, and lay fiat upon the 
stones. The wind searched close along the earth, the 
stones were cutting and icy, the bare hazels wailed about 
him, and soon the air of the afternoon began to be vocal 
with those strange and dismal harpings that herald snow. 
Pain and misery turned in John’s limbs to a harrowing 
impatience and blind desire of change ; now he would roll 
in his harsh lair, and when the flints abraded him, was 
almost pleased ; now he would crawl to the edge of the 
huge pit and look dizzily down. He saw the spiral of the 
descending roadway, the steep crags, the clinging bushes, 
the peppering of snow-wreaths, and far down in the bot- 
tom, the diminished crane. Here, no doubt, was a way to 
end it. But it somehow did not take his fancy. 

And suddenly he was aware that he W'as hungry ; ay, 
even through the tortures of the cold, even through the 
frosts of despair, a gross, desperate longing after food, no 
matter what, no matter how, began to wake and spur him. 
Suppose he pawned his watch ? But no, on Christmas- 
day — this was Christmas-day ! — the pawn-shop would be 
closed. Suppose he went to the public-house close by at 
Blackball, and offered the watch, which was worth ten 
pounds, in payment for a meal of bread and cheese ? The 
incongruity was too remarkable ; the good folks would 
either put him to the door, or only let him in to send for 
the police. He turned his pockets out one after another ; 
some San Francisco tram-car checks, one cigar, no lights, 
the pass-key to his father’s house, a pocket-handkerchief, 
with just a touch of scent : no, money could be raised on 
none of these. There was nothing for it but to starve ; 
and after all, what mattered it ? That also was a door of 
exit. 

He crept close among the bushes, the wind playing 
I'ound him like a lash ; his clothes seemed thin as paper, 


THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 59 

his joints burned, his skin curdled on his bones. He had 
a vision of a high-lying cattle-drive in California, and the 
bed of a dried stream with one muddy pool, by which the 
vaqueros had encamped : splendid sun over all, the big 
bonfire blazing, the strips of cow browning and smoking 
on a skewer of wood ; how warm it was, how savory the 
steam of scorching meat ! And then again he remembered 
his manifold calamities, and burrowed and wallowed in 
the sense of his disgrace and shame. And next he was 
entering Frank’s restaurant in Montgomery Street, San 
Francisco ; he had ordered a pan-stew and venison chops, 
of which he was immoderately fond, and as he sat waiting, 
Munroe, the good attendant, brought him a whiskey punch; 
he saw the strawberries float on the delectable cup, he 
heard the ice chink about the straws. And then he woke 
again to his detested fate, and found himself sitting, 
humped together, in a windy combe of quarry refuse — 
darkness thick about him, thin flakes of snow flying here 
and there like rags of paper, and the strong shuddering of 
his body clashing his teeth like a hiccough. 

We have seen John in nothing but the stormiest condi- 
tions ; we have seen him reckless, desperate, tried beyond 
his moderate powers ; of his daily self, cheerful, regular, 
not unthrifty, we have seen nothing ; and it may thus be 
a surprise to the reader, to learn that he was studiously 
careful of liis health. This favorite preoccupation now 
awoke. If he were to sit there and die of cold, there 
would be mighty little gained ; better the police cell and 
the chances of a jury trial, than the miserable certainty of 
death at a dike-side before the next winter’s dawn, or 
death a little later in the gas-lighted wards of an infirm- 
ary. 

He rose on aching legs, and stumbled here and there 
among the rubbish heaps, still circumvented by the yawn- 
ing crater of the quarry ; or perhaps he only thought so, 
for the darkness was already dense, the snow was growing 
thicker, and he moved like a blind man, and with a blind 


6o THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 

man’s terrors. At last he climbed a fence, thinking to 
drop into the road, and found himself staggering, instead, 
among the iron furrows of a plough-land, endless, it seemed, 
as a whole county. And next he was in a wood, beating 
among young trees ; and then he was aware of a house 
with many lighted windows, Christmas carriages waiting 
at the doors, and Christmas drivers (for Christmas has a 
double edge) becoming swiftly hooded with snow. From 
this glimpse of human cheerfulness, he fled like Cain ; 
wandered in the night, unpiloted, careless of whither he 
went ; fell, and lay, and then rose again and wandered fur- 
ther ; and at last, like a transformation scene, behold him 
in the lighted jaws of the city, staring at a lamp whicli had 
already donned the tilted nightcap of the snow. It came 
thickly now, a “ Feeding Storm and while he yet stood 
blinking at the lamp, his feet were buried. He remem- 
bered something like it in the past, a street-lamp crowned 
and caked upon the windward side with snow, the wind 
uttering its mournful hoot, himself looking on, even as 
now ; but the cold had struck too sharply on his wits, and 
memory failed him as to the date and sequel of the rem- 
iniscence. 

His next conscious moment was on the Dean Bridge ; 
but whether he was John Nicholson of a bank in a Cali- 
fornia street, or some former John, a clerk in his father’s 
office, he had now clean forgotten. Another blank, and 
he was thrusting his pass-key into the door-lock of his 
father’s house. 

Hours must have passed. Whether crouched on tlie 
cold stones or wandering in the fields among the snow, 
was more than he could tell ; but hours had passed. The 
finger of the hall clock was close on twelve ; a narrow peep 
of gas in the hall-lamp shed shadows ; and the door of the 
back room — his father’s room — was open and emitted a 
warm light. At so late an hour, all this was strange ; 
the lights should have been out, the doors locked, the 
good folk safe in bed, He marvelled at the irregularity. 


THE MISADVEATURES OF JOHAT NICHOLSON, 6i 

leaning on the hall-table ; and marvelled to himself there ; 
and thawed and grew once more hungry, in the warmer 
air of the house. 

The clock uttered its premonitory catch ; in five min- 
utes Christmas-day would be among the days of the past 
— Christmas ! — what a Christmas ! Well, there was no use 
waiting ; he had come into that house, he scarce knew 
how ; if they were to thrust him forth again, it had best be 
done at once ; and he moved to the door of the back room 
and entered. 

Oh, well, then he was insane, as he had long be- 
lieved. 

There, in his father’s room, at midnight, the fire was 
roaring and the gas blazing; the papers, the sacred papers 
— to lay a hand on which was Criminal — had all been taken 
off and piled along the floor ; a cloth was spread, and a 
supper laid, upon the business table ; and in his father’s 
chair a woman, habited like a nun, sat eating. As he ap- 
peared in the door-way, the nun rose, gave a low cry, and 
stood staring. She was a large woman, strong, calm, a 
little masculine, her features marked with courage and 
good sense ; and as John blinked back at her, a faint re- 
semblance dodged about his memory, as when a tune 
haunts us, and yet will not be recalled. 

“Why, it’s John !” cried the nun. 

“I dare say I’m mad,” said John, unconsciously follow- 
ing King Lear ; “ but, upon my word, I do believe you’re 
Flora.” 

“ Of course I am,” replied she. 

And yet it is not Flora at all, thought John ; Flora was 
slender, and timid, and of changing color, and dewy-eyed ; 
and had Flora such an Edinburgh accent ? But he said 
none of these things, which was perhaps as well. What 
he said was, “ Then why are you a nun ? ” 

“Such nonsense ! ” said Flora. “ I’m a sick-nurse ; and 
I am here nursing your sister, with whom, between you 
and me, there is precious little the matter. But that is 


62 THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 

not the question. The point is : How do you come here ? 
and are you not ashamed to show yourself?” 

‘‘Flora,” said John, sepulchrally, “ I haven’t eaten any- 
thing for three days. Or, at least, I don’t know what day 
it is ; but I guess I’m starving.” 

“You unhappy man ! ” she cried. “ Here, sit down and 
eat my supper ; and I’ll just run upstairs and see my 
patient, not but what I doubt she’s fast asleep ; for Maria 
is a malade imaginaired* 

With this specimen of the French, not of Stratford atte- 
Bowe, but of a finishing establishment in Moray Place, 
she left John alone in his father’s sanctum. He fell at 
once upon the food ; and it is to be supposed that Flora 
had found her patient wakeful, and been detained with 
some details of nursing, for he had time to make a full end 
of all there was to eat, and not only to empty the teapot, 
but to fill it again from a kettle that was fitfully singing 
on his father’s fire. Then he sat torpid, and pleased, and 
bewildered ; his misfortunes were then half forgotten ; his 
mind considering, not without regret, this unsentimental 
return to his old love. 

He was thus engaged, when that bustling woman noise- 
lessly re-entered. 

“ Have you eaten ? ” said she. “ Then tell me all about 
it.” 

It was a long and (as the reader knows) a pitiful story; 
but Flora heard it with compressed lips. She was lost in 
none of those questionings of human destiny that have, 
from time to time, arrested the flight of my own pen ; for 
women, such as she, are no philosophers, and behold the 
concrete only. And women, such as she, are very hard on 
the imperfect man. 

“Very well,” said she, when he had done ; “ then down 
upon your knees at once, and beg God’s forgiveness.” 

And the great baby plumped upon his knees, and did as 
he was bid ; and none the worse for that ! But while he 
was heartily enough requesting forgiveness on general 


THE M/SAD VENT [/EES OF JOHN NICHOLSON, 63 

principles, the rational side of him distinguished, and 
wondered if, perhaps, the apology were not due upon the 
other part. And when he rose again from that becoming 
exercise, he first eyed the face of his old love doubtfully, 
and then, taking heart, uttered his protest. 

“ I must say. Flora,” said he, “ in all this business, I can 
see very little fault of mine.” 

“If you had written home,” replied the lady, “there 
would have been none of it. If you had even gone to 
Murrayfield reasonably sober, you would never have slept 
there, and the worst would not have happened. Besides, 
the whole thing began years ago. You got into trouble, 
and when your father, honest man, was disappointed, you 
took the pet, or got afraid, and ran away from punishment. 
Well, you’ve had your own way of it, John, and I don’t 
suppose you like it.” 

“ I sometimes fancy I’m not much better than a fool,” 
sighed John. 

“ My dear John,” said she, “ not much ! ” 

He looked at her, and his eye fell. A certain anger rose 
within him ; here was a Flora he disowned ; she was hard ; 
she Was of a set color; a settled, mature, undeco rative 
manner ; plain of speech, plain of habit — he had come near 
saying, plain of face. And this changeling called herself 
by the same name as the many-colored, clinging maid of 
yore ; slie of the frequent laughter, and the many sighs, 
and the kind, stolen glances. And to make all worse, she 
took the upper hand with him, which (as John well knew) 
was not the true relation of the sexes. He steeled his 
heart against this sick-nurse. 

“ And how do you come to be here ? ” he asked. 

She told him how she had nursed her father in his long 
illness, and when he died, and she was left alone, had taken 
to nurse others, partly from habit, partly to be of some 
service in the world ; partly, it might be, for amusement. 
“ There’s no accounting for taste,” said she. And she 
told him how she went largely to the houses of old friends. 


64 THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 

as the need arose ; and how she was thus doubly welcome, 
as an old friend first, and then as an experienced nurse, to 
whom doctors would confide the gravest cases. 

“And, indeed, it's a mere farce my being here for poor 
Maria,” she continued ; “but your father takes her ail- 
ments to heart, and I cannot always be refusing him. We 
are great friends, your father and I ; he was very kind to 
me long ago — ten years ago.” 

A strange stir came in John’s heart. All this while had 
he been thinking only of himself? All this while, why had 
he not written to Flora? In penitential tenderness, he 
took her hand, and, to his awe and trouble, it remained in 
his, compliant. A voice told him this was Flora, after ail 
—told him so quietly, yet with a thrill of singing. 

“ And you never married ? ” said he. 

“No, John ; I never married,” she replied. 

The hall clock striking two recalled them to the sense 
of time. 

“And now,” said she, “you have been fed and warmed, 
and I have heard your story, and now it’s high time to call 
your brother.” 

“Oh!” cried John, chap-fallen; “do you think that 
absolutely necessary ? ” 

“/ can’t keep you here ; I am a stranger,” said she. 
“ Do you want to run a'vvay again ? I thought you had 
enough of that.” 

He bowed his head under the reproof. She despised 
him, he reflected, as he sat once more alone ; a monstrous 
thing for a woman to despise a man ; and strangest of all, 
she seemed to like him. Would his brother despise him, 
too ? And would his brother like him ? 

And presently the brother appeared, under Flora’s es- 
cort ; and, standing afar off beside the door-way, eyed the 
hero of this tale. 

“ So this is you ? ” he said, at length. 

“Yes, Alick, it’s me — it’s John,” replied the elder 
brother, feebly. 


THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 65 


“And how did you get in here ?” inquired the younger. 

“ Oh, I had my pass-key,” says John. 

“The deuce you had!” said Alexander. “Ah, you 
lived in a better world ! There are no pass-keys going 
now.” 

“ Well, father was always averse to them,” sighed John. 
And the conversation then broke down, and the brothers 
looked askance at one another in silence. 

“Well, and what the devil are we to do?” said Alex- 
ander. “I suppose if the authorities got wind of you, you 
would be taken up ? ” 

“It depends on whether they’ve found the body or not,” 
returned John. “And then there’s that cabman, to be 
sure ! ” 

“ Oh, bother the body ! ” said Alexander. “ I mean 
about the other thing. That’s serious.” 

“Is that what my father spoke about?” asked John. 
“I don’t even know what it is.” 

“About your robbing your bank in California, of 
course,” replied Alexander. 

It was plain, from Flora’s face, that this was the first she 
had heard of it ; it was plainer still, from John’s, that he 
was innocent. 

“II” he exclaimed. “ I rob my bank ! My God 1 
Flora, this is too much ; even you must allow that.” 

“ Meaning you didn’t ? ” asked Alexander. 

“I never robbed a soul in all my days,” cried John : 
“ except my father, if you call that robbery ; and I brought 
him back the money in this room, and he wouldn’t even 
take it ! ” 

“Look here, John,” said his brother; “let us have no 
misunderstanding upon this. Macevven saw my father; 
he told him a bank you had worked for in San Francisco 
was wiring over the habitable globe to have you collared 

that it was supposed you had nailed thousands ; and it 
was dead certain you had nailed three hundred. So 
Macewen said, and I wish you would be careful how you 
5 


66 THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON 


answer. I may tell you also, that your father paid the 
three hundred on the spot." 

“Three liundred ? ” repeated John. “Three hundred 
pounds, you mean ? That’s fifteen hundred dollars. Why, 
then, it’s Kirkman!’’ he broke out. “Thank Heaven! I 
can explain all that. I gave them to Kirkman to pay it 
for me the night before I left — fifteen hundred dollars, 
and a letter to the manager. What do they suppose I 
would steal fifteen hundred dollars for ? I’m rich ; I struck 
it rich in stocks. It’s the silliest stuff I ever heard of. All 
that’s needful is to cable to the manager : Kirkman has 
the fifteen hundred — find Kirkman. He was a fellow- 
clerk of mine, and a hard case ; but to do him justice, I 
didn’t think he was as hard as this.” 

“And what do you say to that, Alick ? ” asked Flora. 

“I say the cablegram shall go to-night!” cried Alexan-- 
der, with energy. “ Answer prepaid, too. If this can be 
cleared away — and upon my word I do believe it can — we 
shall all be able to hold up our heads again. Here, you 
John, you stick down the address of your bank manager. 
You, Flora, you can pack John into my bed, for which I 
have no further use to-night. As for me, I am off to the 
post-office, and thence to the High Street about the dead 
body. The police ought to know, you see, and they 
ought to know through John ; and I can tell them some 
rigmarole about my brother being a man of highly ner- 
vous organization, and the rest of it. And then, I’ll tell 
you what, John — did you notice the name upon the 
cab ? ” 

John gave the name of the driver, which, as I have not 
been able to command the vehicle, I here suppress. 

“ Well,” resumed Alexander, “ I’ll call round at their 
place before I come back, and pay your shot for you. In 
that way, before breakfast-time, you’ll be as good as new.” 

John murmured inarticulate thanks. To see his brother 
thus energetic in his service moved him beyond expression ; 
if he could not utter what he felt, he showed it legibly in 


THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 67 


his face ; and Alexander read it there, and liked it the 
better in that dumb delivery. 

“ But there’s one thing,” said the latter, “ cablegrams 
are dear ; and I dare say you remember enough of the 
governor to guess the state of my finances.” 

“The trouble is,” said John, “that all my stamps are in 
that beastly house.” 

“All your what?” asked Alexander. 

“ Stamps — money,” explained John. “ It’s an American 
expression ; I am afraid I contracted one or two.” 

“ I have some,” said Flora. “ I have a pound note up- 
stairs.” 

“ My dear Flora,” returned Alexander, “ a pound note 
won’t see us very far ; and besides, this is my father’s busi- 
ness, and I shall be very much surprised if it isn’t my 
father who pays for it.” 

“ I would not apply to him yet ; I do not think that can 
be wise,” objected Flora. 

“You have a very imperfect idea of my resources, and 
none at all of my effrontery,” replied Alexander. “ Please 
observe.” 

He put John from his way, chose a- stout knife among 
the supper things, and with surprising quickness broke 
into his father’s drawer. 

“ There’s nothing easier when you come to try,” he ob- 
served, pocketing the money. 

“ I wish you had not done that,” said Flora. “You will 
never hear the last of it.” 

“Oh, I don’t know,” returned the young man; “the 
governor is human after all. And now, John, let me see 
your famous pass-key. Get into bed, and don’t move for 
anyone till I come back. They won’t mind you not an- 
swering when they knock ; I generally don’t myself.” 


CHAPTER IX. 


IN WHICH MR. NICHOLSON ACCEPTS THE PRINCIPLE OF AN AL- 
LOWANCE. 

In spite of the horrors of the day and the tea-drinking 
of the night, John slept the sleep of infancy. He was 
awakened by the maid, as it might have been ten years 
ago, tapping at the door. The winter sunrise was paint- 
ing the east ; and as the window was to the back of the 
house, it shone into the room with many strange colors of 
refracted light. Without, the houses were all cleanly 
roofed with snow ; the garden walls were coped with it a 
foot in height ; the greens lay glittering. Yet strange as 
snow had grown to John during his years upon the Bay of 
San Francisco, it was what he saw within that most affected 
him. For it was to his own room th9,t Alexander had been 
promoted ; there was the old paper with the device of 
flowers, in which a cunning fancy might yet detect the 
face of Skinny Jim, of the Academy, John’s former 
dominie ; there was the old chest of drawers ; there were 
the chairs — one, two, three — three as before. Only the 
carpet was new, and the litter of Alexander’s clothes and 
books and drawing materials, and a pencil-drawing on the 
wall, which (in John’s eyes) appeared a marvel of pro- 
ficiency. 

He was thus lying, and looking, and dreaming, hanging, 
as it were, between two epochs of his life, when Alexander 
came to the door, and made his presence known in a loud 
whisper. John let him in, and jumped back into the 
warm bed. 

“Well,' John,” said Alexander, “the cablegram is sent 


THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 69 

in your name, and twenty words of answer paid. I have 
been to the cab office and paid your cab, even saw the old 
gentleman himself,- and properly apologized. He was 
mighty placable, and indicated his belief you had been 
drinking. Then I knocked up old Macewen out of bed, 
and explained affairs to him as he sat and shivered in a 
dressing-gown. And before that I had been to the High 
Street, where they have heard nothing of your dead body, 
so that I incline to tfie idea that you dreamed it.” 

“ Catch me ! ” said John. 

Well, the police never do know anything,” assented 
Alexander ; “ and at any rate, they have despatched a man 
to inquire and to recover your trousers and your money, 
so that really your bill is now fairly clean ; and I see but 
one lion in your path — the governor.” 

“I’ll be turned out again, you’ll see,” said John, dis- 
mally. 

“I don’t imagine so,” returned the other ; “not if you 
do what Flora and I have arranged ; and your business now 
is to dress, and lose no time about it. Is your watch right ? 
Well, you have a quarter of an hour. By five minutes be- 
fore the half hour you must be at table, in your old seat, 
under Uncle Duthie’s picture. Flora will be there to keep 
you countenance ; and we shall see what we shall see.” 

“Wouldn’t it be wiser for me to stay in bed?” said 
John. 

“ If you mean to manage your own concerns, you can 
do precisely what you like,” replied Alexander; “but if 
you are not in your place five minutes before the half 
hour I wash my hands of you, for one.” 

And thereupon he departed. He had spoken warmly, 
but the truth is, his heart was somewhat troubled. And 
as he hung over the balusters, watching for his father to 
appear, he had hard ado to keep himself braced fqr the 
encounter that must follow. 

“ If he takes it well, I shall be lucky,” he reflected. 
*‘If he takes it ill, why it’ll be a herring across John’s 


70 THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 

tracks, and perhaps. all for the best. He’s a confounded 
muff, this brother of mine, but he seems a decent soul.” 

At that stage a door opened below with a certain em- 
phasis, and Mr. Nicholson was seen solemnly to descend 
the stairs, and pass into his own apartment. Alexander 
followed, quaking inwardly, but with a steady face. He 
knocked, was bidden to enter, and found his father stand- 
ing in front of the forced drawer, to which he pointed as 
he spoke. * 

“ This is a most extraordinary thing,” said he ; “ I have 
been robbed ! ” 

I was afraid you would notice it,” observed his son ; 

it made such a beastly hash of the table.” 

“You were afraid I would notice it?” repeated Mr. 
Nicholson. “And, pray, what may that mean ?” 

“That I was a thief, sir,” returned Alexander. “I 
took all the money in case the servants should get hold 
of it ; and here is the change, and a note of my expendi- 
ture. You were gone to bed, you see, and I did not feel 
at liberty to knock you up ; but I think when you have 
heard the circumstances, you will do me justice. The fact 
is, I have reason to believe there has been some dreadful 
error about my brother John ; the sooner it can be cleared 
up the better for all parties ; it was a piece of business, 
sir — and so I took it, and decided, on my own responsi- 
bility, to send a telegram to San Francisco. Thanks to 
my quickness we may hear to-night. There appears to 
be no doubt, sir, that John has been abominably used.” 

“ When did this take place ? ” asked the father. 

“Last night, sir, after you were asleep,” was the reply. 

“It’s most extraordinary,” said Mr. Nicholson. “Do 
you mean to say you have been out all night ?” 

“All night, as you say, sir. I have been to the tele- 
graph and the police office, and Mr. Mace wen’s. Oh, I 
had my hands full,” said Alexander. 

“Very irregular,” said the father. “You think of no 
one but yourself.” 


THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. >jt 

“ I do not see that I have much to gain in bringing 
back my elder brother,” returned Alexander, shrewdly. 

The answer pleased the old man ; he smiled. Well, 
well, I will go into this after breakfast,” said he. 

“ I’m sorry about the table,” said the son. 

“ The table is a small matter ; I think nothing of that,” 
said the father. 

It’s another example,” continued the son, “ of the 
awkwardness of a man having no money of his own. If I 
had a proper allowance, like other fellows of my age, this 
would have been quite unnecessary.” 

“A proper allowance ! ” repeated his father, in tones of 
blighting sarcasm, for the expression was not new to him. 
“ I have never grudged you money for any proper pur- 
pose.” 

“No doubt, no doubt,” said Alexander, “but then you 
see you ar’n’t always on the spot to have the thing ex- 
plained to you. Last night for instance ” 

“You could have wakened me last night,” interrupted 
his father. 

“Was it not some similar affair that first got John into 
a mess ? ” asked the son, skilfully evading the point. 

But the father was not less adroit. “ And pray, sir, how 
did you come and go out of the house ? ” he asked. 

“ I forgot to lock the door, it seems,” replied Alexan- 
der. 

“ I have had cause to complain of that too often,” said 
Mr. Nicholson. “ But still I do not understand. Did you 
keep tlie servants up ? ” 

“ I propose to go into all that at length after breakfast,” 
returned Alexander. “There is the half hour going ; we 
must not keep Miss Mackenzie waiting.” 

And greatly daring, lie opened the door. 

Even Alexander, who, it must have been perceived, was 
on terms of comparative freedom with his parent ; even 
Alexander had never before dared to cut short an interview 
in this high-handed fashion. But the truth is the very 


72 THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON. 

mass of his son’s delinquencies daunted the old gentleman. 
He was like the man with the cart of apples — this was be- 
yond him ! That Alexander should have spoiled his table, 
taken his money, stayed out all night, and then coolly 
acknowledged all, was something undreamed of in the 
Nicholsonian philosophy, and transcended comment. The 
return of the change, which the old gentleman still carried 
in his hand, had been a feature of imposing impudence ; 
it had dealt him a staggering blow. Then there was the 
reference to John’s original flight — a subject which he 
always kept resolutely curtained in his own mind ; for he 
was a man who loved to have made no mistakes, and when 
he feared he might have made one kept the papers sealed. 
In view of all these surprises and reminders, and of his 
son’s composed and masterful demeanor, there began to 
creep on Mr. Nicholson a sickly misgiving. He seemed 
beyond his depth ; if he did or said anything, he might 
come to regret it. The young man, besides, as he had 
pointed out himself, was playing a generous part. And if 
wrong had been done — and done to one who was, after, 
and in spite of, all, a Nicholson — it should certainly be 
righted. 

All things considered, monstrous as it was to be cut short 
in his inquiries, the old gentleman submitted, pocketed the 
change, and followed his son into the dining-room. Dur- 
ing these few steps he once more mentally revolted, and 
once more, and this time finally, laid down his arms : a 
still, small voice in his bosom having informed him au- 
thentically of a piece of news ; that he was afraid of Alex- 
ander. The strange thing was that he was pleased to be 
afraid of him. He was proud of his son ; he might be 
proud of him ; the boy had character and grit, and knew 
what he was doing. 

These were his reflections as he turned the corner of the 
dining-room door. Miss Mackenzie was in the place of 
honor, conjuring with a teapot and a cosey ; and, behold ! 
there was another person present, a large, portly, whis- 


THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON 73 

kered man of a very comfortable and respectable air, who 
now rose from his seat and came forward, holding out his 
hand. 

“ Good-morning, father,” said he. 

Of the contention of feeling that ran high in Mr. 
Nicholson’s starched bosom, no outward sign was visible ; 
nor did he delay long to make a choice of conduct. Yet 
in that interval he had reviewed a great field of possibili- 
ties both past and future ; whether it w^as possible he had 
not been perfectly wise in his treatment of John ; whether 
it was possible that John was innocent ; whether, if he 
turned John out a second time, as his outraged authority 
suggested, it was possible to avoid a scandal ; and whether, 
if he went to that extremity, it was possible that Alexan- 
der might rebel. 

“ Hum ! ” said Mr. Nicholson, and put his hand, limp 
and dead, into John’s. 

And then, in an embarrassed silence, all took their 
places ; and even the paper — from which it was the old 
gentleman’s habit to suck mortification daily, as he marked 
the decline of our institutions — even the paper lay furled 
by his side. 

But presently Flora came to the rescue. She slid into 
the silence with a technicality, asking if John still took 
his old inordinate amount of sugar. Thence it was but a 
step to the burning question of the day ; and in tones a 
little shaken, she commented on the interval since she had 
last made tea for the prodigal, and congratulated him on 
his return. And then addressing Mr. Nicholson, she con- 
gratulated him also in a manner that defied his ill-humor ; 
and from that launched into the tale of John’s misadvent- 
ures, not without some suitable suppressions. 

Gradually Alexander joined ; between them, whether 
he would or no, they forced a word or two from John ; 
and these fell so tremulously, and spoke so eloquently 
of a mind oppressed with dread, that Mr. Nicholson re- 
lented. At length even he contributed a question : and 


74 THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON, 

before the meal was at an end all four were talking even 
freely. * 

Prayers followed, with the servants gaping at this new- 
comer whom no one had admitted ; and after prayers there 
came that moment on the clock which was the signal for 
Mr. Nicholson’s departure. 

“John,” said he, “of course you will stay here. Be 
very careful not to excite Maria, if Miss Mackenzie thinks 
it desirable that you should see her. Alexander, I wish to 
speak with you alone.” And then, when they were both 
in the back-room : “ You need not come to the office to- 
day,” said he ; “you can stay and amuse your brother, and 
I think it would be respectful to call on Uncle Greig. 
And by the bye ” (this spoken with a certain — dare we 
say ? — bashfulness), “ I agree to concede the principle of 
an allowance ; and I will consult with Doctor Durie, who 
is quite a man of the world and has sons of his own, as to 
the amount. And, my fine fellow, you may consider your- 
self in luck ! ” he added, with a smile. 

“ Thank you,” said Alexander. 

Before noon a detective had restored to John his money, 
and brought news, sad enough in truth, but perhaps the 
least sad possible. Alan had been found in his own house 
in Regent’s Terrace, under care of the terrified butler. 
He was quite mad, and instead of going to prison, had gone 
to Morningside Asylum. The murdered man, it appeared, 
was an evicted tenant who had for nearly a year pursued 
liis late landlord with threats and insults ; and beyond this, 
the cause and details of the tragedy w^ere lost. 

When Mr. Nicholson returned from dinner they were 
able to put a despatch into his hands: “John V. Nichol- 
son ; Randolph Crescent, Edinburgh. — Kirkman has disap- 
peared ; police looking for him. All understood. Keep 
mind quite easy. — Austin.” Having had this explained to 
him, the old gentleman took down the cellar key and de- 
parted for two bottles of the 1820 port. Uncle Greig dined 


THE MISADVENTURES X)F JOHN NICHOLSON, 75 

there that day, and Cousin Robina, and, by an odd chance, 
Mr. Macewen ; and the presence of these strangers relieved 
what might have been otherwise a somewhat strained rela- 
tion. Ere they departed, the family was welded once more 
into a fair semblance of unity. 

In the end of April John led Flora — or, as more de- 
scriptive, Flora led John — to the altar, if altar that may be 
called which was indeed the drawing-room m&Se- piece in 
Mr. Nicholson’s house, with the Reverend Dr. Durie posted 
on the hearth-rug in the guise of Hymen’s priest. 

The last I saw of them, on a recent visit to the North, 
was at a dinner-party in the house of my old friend /jel- 
latly Macbride ; and after we had, in classiG„^hrase, “ re- 
joined the ladies,” I had an opportunity to overhear Flora 
conversing with another married woman on the much can- 
vassed matter of a husband’s tobacco. 

“ Oh, yes ! ” said she ; “ I only allow Mr. Nicholson four 
cigars a day. Three he smokes at fixed times — after a 
meal, you know, my dear; and the fourth he can take 
when he likes with any friend.” 

Bravo ! ” thought I to myself ; “ this is the wife for my 
fridnd John ! ” 




THE END. 


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anarks the >70111611 of our households when they undertake to make their 
homes bright and cheery. Nothing deters them. Their weary work may 
be as long as the word which begins this paragraph, but they prove their 
regard for decent homes by their indefatigability. What a pity that any 
of them should add to their toil by neglecting to use Sapolio. It reduces 
the labor of cleaning and scouring at least onc-balf. 10 c. a cake. Sold by 
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Dr. a. W. THOMPSOif, Northampton, Mass., says: ‘‘I have tested the 
Gluten Suppositories, and consider them valuable, as indeed, I expected 
from the excellence or their theory.** 


Dr. Wm. Ton Helmuts declares the Gluten Suppositories to be “ the 
best remedy for constipation which I have ever prescribed.’* 

*‘As Sancho Panza said of sleep, so say I of your Gluten Suppositories : 
God bless the man who invented them ! E. L. Ripley, Burlington,, Vt. 

I prescribe the Gluten Suppositories almost daily in my practice and 
am often astonished at the permanent results obtained.” — J. Montfort 
Schley, M.D., Professor Physical Diagnosis Woman’s Medical College, 
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HEALTH FOOD CO., 75 4th Avenue, N. T. 


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SOCIALISM IN ACTION 


It is the distinguishing feature of the Labor Movement that it 
strives after the attainment of a social state for every human 
being, such as shall be the healthy stimulation of all his good 
qualities, while his bad tendencies shall wither and drop away 
from him by the impossibility of their sustenance. 

To get at this conception of the possible life of man, has re- 
quired the experience of every day and every year, since the race 
arrived at the ability to keep a record of its progress. 

The process of the seasons, the growth and ripening of the crops 
has been the lesson nature has afforded for the study of her 
methods, and this ceaseless repetition has finally awakened man to 
the conception that his own life allies him to the same law of 
development. 

This is the measure of the socialist movement of the present, and 
for those who desire to take part in its furtherance we would com- 
mend the study of SOCIAL SOLUTIONS.* 

The main purpose of this publication was to issue the transla- 
tion by Marie Howland of the first public statement by M. Godin, 
of the study and experience he has illustrated in the construction 
and organization of the FAMILISTERE. 

Though the translation of this most important demonstration of 
the new life for labor was announced when it was prepared, by one 
of the chief publishers of this country, yet being abandoned on the 
ground “the labor question was too exciting,” it remained in 
manuscript until, in the course of events, a more progressive pub- 
lisher was found. In its preparation the plan adopted was that 
of twelve parts, each of which should contain such illustrative 
material as the editor should either find or prepare. The twelve 
parts are now published and for sale. While the complete trans- 
lation of M. Godin’s work is contained in eleven of the parts, the 
twelfth part is an admirable and complete exposition of the series 
of social solutions proposed by the Credit Foncier of Sinaloa, for 
the organization of the society on Topolobampo Bay, in Sinaloa, 
Mexico, which has been gathered by the Credit Foncier of Sinaloa^ 
a paper published at Hammonton, New Jersey, at $1.00 a year. 

* Social Solutions, publlslied la 12 parts in Lovell’s Library, price 10 cents 
each, or tbe 12 parts lor $1.00. 


• JOHN W. LOVELL OO., 

14 and 16 Vesey St,, New Yorh, 



The Best Utterance 

—OK THE 

LABOR QUESTION. 


*^Solutions Socicdes” translated by Marie Howland. 


Social Solutions,” a semi-monthly pamphlet, containing 
each a twelfth part of an admirable English translation of 
M. Godin’s statement of the course of study which led him 
to conceive the Social Palace at Guise, France. There is 
no question that this publication makes an era in the 
growth of the labor question. It should serve as uhe 
manual fof organized labor in its present contest, since its 
teachings will as surely lead to the destruction of the wages 
system as the abolition movement lead to that of chattel 
slavery. Each number contains articles of importance, 
besides the portion of the translation. Many of these are 
translated from M. Godin’s contributions to the socialistic 
propaganda in Europe. 

Published as regular issues of the “ Lovell Library,” 
by the John W. LoveU Company, 14 and 16 Vesey Street, 
New York, N. Y., at ten cents per number ; the subscrip- 
tion of $1.00 secures the delivery of the complete series. 

JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY, 

14: and 16 Vesey Street, NEW YOMK, 



“PAPA’S OWN GIRL” 

By Marie Howland. 


The manuscript of this great American Novel waa 

1 submitted by the author to one of the ablest of our edi« 
torial critics, who, after a careful perusal, returned it with 
the following analysis of its rai'e excellence : 

“ i think cf them, the men, women and children of your story 
seem like actuaUy IMng beings, whom I have met and lived with., m 
perhaps may nuet to-morrow. 

“ The last half of your novel is grander than anything GEORGE 
ELIOT ever wrote. I am not, in saying this, disparaging the first 
half of the story, hut this last part is a new gospel. THE CO UNT 
is a creation suggested by the best qualities of the best men you have 
known. TEE SOCIAL PALACE, as you have painted it, is the 
heaven of humanity; and the best of it is, that it is a heaven capaUe of 
realization. ******* gpjiQ scene of 
DAN^S return, and of his meeting with MIN, is indescribably pathetic! 
no one could read it with dry eyes, and the moral element involved is 
more effective than in any dramatic situation in literature. With the 
true fidelity of the artist you have given perfect attention to your minor 
characters, '• TOO SOON' f 07' example; and I admire the tact with 
which you bring over Mrs. FOREST into sympathy with the SOCIAL 
PALACE and WOMAN'S RIGHTS. This is true ART. T<mr 
7 iovel throughout meets all the great questions of the day, even the finan- 
cial one, and it is the best translation of GODIN that could be given. 
You will fine., a PUBLISHER, be sure of that, and THE NOVEL 
WILL BE THE GREATEST LITERARY SENSATION OF 
THE TIME." 

This powerfully written and artistic Novel is to the social 
questions now convulsing the civilized world what “Uncle 
Tom’s Cabin ” was to the slavery agitation. 


‘ One volume, 1 2mo, Lovell’s Library, No. 534s 
30 cents ; Cloth, 45 cents. 


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, a largeness, a freshness, and a strength about him which are full of promise and 
I* encouragement, the more since he has placed himself so unmistakably on the roman- 
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already one of the foremost modern romance writers. — N, K. World. 

It seems to me that Mr. Haggard has supplied to us in this book the complement 
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One cannot too much applaud Mr. Haggard for his power in working up to a 
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This bare sketch of the story gives no conception of the beauty of the love- 
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Few stories of the season are more exciting than this, for it contains an account 
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This novel has achieved a wonderful popuhrity. It is one of the best selling 
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THE WITCH’S HEAD. A Novel. T2mo. Paper, 20 cents. 
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/ 

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at the Invalids’ Hotel and Surgical In- 
stitute, Buffalo, N. Y., has afforded a 
vast experience in nicely adapting and 
thoroughly testing remedies for the 
cure of woman’s peculiar maladies. 

Dr. Pierce’s Favorite Prescrip- 
tiou is the outgrowth, or result, of this 
great and valuable experience. Thou- 
sands of testimonials received from pa- 
tients and from physicians who have 
tested it in the more aggravated and 
obstinate eases which had baiffed their 
skill, prove it to be the most wonderful 
remedy ever devised for the relief and 
cure of suffering women. It is not re- 
commended as a “cure-all,” but as a 
most perfect Speciflo for woman’s 
peculiar ailments. 

As a powerful, invigorating 
tonic it imparts strength to the whole 
system, and to the uterus, or womb and 
its appendages, in particular. For over- 
worked, “worn-out,” “run-down,” de- 
bilitated teachers, milliners, dressmak- 
ers, seamstresses, “shop-girls,” house- 
keepers, nursing mothers, and feeble 
women generally. Dr. Pierce’s Favorite 
Prescription is the greatest earthly boon, 
being unequalled as an appetizing cor- 
dial and restorative tonic. It promotes 
digestion and assimilation of food, cures 
nausea, weakness of stomach, indiges- 
tion, bloating and eructations of gas. 

As a sootliiiig and strengthen- 
ing nervine* “ Favorite Prescription ” 
is unequalled and is invaluable in allay- 
ing 'and subduing nervous excitability, 
irritability, exhaustion, prostration, hys- 
teria, spasms and other distressing, nerv- 
ous sy mptoms commonly attendant upon 
functional and organic disease of the 
womb. It induces refreshing sleep and 
relieves mental anxiety and despond- 
ency. 

Dr. Pierce’s Favorite Prescrip- 
tion is a legitimate medicine, 

carefully compounded by an experienc- 
ed and skillful physician, and adapted 
to woman’s delicate organization. It is 
purely vegetable in its composition and 


perfectly harmless In its effects in any 
condition of the system. 

“Favorite Prescription”# is a 
positive cure for the most compli- 
cated and obstinate cases of leucorrhea, 
or “ whites,” excessive flowing at month- 
ly periods, painful menstruation, unnat- 
ural suppressions, prolapsus or falling 
of the womb, weak back, “female weak- 
ness,” anteversion, retroversion, bearing- 
down sensations, chronic congestion, in 
flammation and ulceration of the worn!) 
inflammation, pain and tenderness i 
ovaries, accompanied with internal heat. 

Ill pregnancy, “ Favorite Prescrip- 
tion” is a “mother’s cordial,” relieving 
nausea, weakness of stomach and other 
distressing symptoms common to that 
condition. If its use is kept up in the 
latter months of gestation, it so prepares 
the system for delivery as to greatly 
lessen, and many times almost entirely 
do away with the sufferings of that try- 
ing ordeal. 

“ Favorite Prescription,” when 
taken in connection with the use of 
Dr. Pierce’s Golden Medical Discovery, 
and sni all laxative doses of Dr. Pierce’s 
Purgative Pellets (Little Liver Pills), 
cures Liver, Kidney and Bladder dis- 
eases. Their combined use also removes 
blood taints, and abolishes cancerous 
and scrofulous humors from the system 

Treating tlie Wrong Disease^-' 
Many times women call on their fami^ 
physicians, suffering, as they imagina 
one from dyspepsia, another from heart 
disease, another from liver or kidney 
disease, another from nervous exhaus* 
tion or prostration, another with pain 
here or there, and in this way they all 
present alike to themselves and theii' 
easy-going and indifferent, or over-busy 
doctor, separate and distinct diseases, 
for which he prescribes his pills and 
potions, assuming them to be such, 
when, in reality, they are all only symp- 
toms caused by some womb disorder. 
The physician, ignorant of the cause of 
suffering, encourages his practice until 
large bills are made. The suffering pa- 
tient gets no better, but probably worse 
by reason of the delay, wrong treatment 
and consequent complications. A prop- 
er medicine, like Dr. Pierce’s Favorite 
Prescription, directed to the cause would 
have entirely removed the disease, there- 
by dispelling all those distressing symp 
toms, and instituting comfort instead of 
prolonged misery. 

“Favorite Prescription” is the 

only medicine for women sold, by drug- 
gists, under a positive guarantee, 
from the manufacturers, that it will 
give satisfaction in every case, or money 
will be refunded. This guarantee has 
been printed on the bottle- wrapper, and 
faithfully carried out for many years. 
Liarge bottles (100 doses) $1.00* or 
six bottles for $5.00. 

Send ten cents in stamps for Dr. 
Pierce’s large, illustrated Treatise (160 
pages) on Diseases of Women. Address, 
World’s Dispensary Medical Assoclationi 
NO. 668 Main stiubst, buffalo^ if, T, 















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